EHR and Healthcare IT in 2012

I was asked by Practice Fusion to provide them some Health IT and EHR predictions for 2012. Here’s what I sent them:

“Next year will be all about Meaningful Use: Meaningful Use, ACOs, Meaningful Use, ICD-10, Meaningful Use, Meaningful Use, 5010, and a little more Meaningful Use covered in Meaningful Use.”

Sadly, I think this is a summary of what we can expect over the next year. Yes, it’s sad for me to predict that we’re going to be so mired in government requirements in 2012 that it is really hard to predict anything else really breaking significantly into the conversation in 2012.

As I ponder this New Year, I think my off the cuff (almost sarcastic) response above is actually going to be a pretty solid 2012 EHR and health IT prediction. However, that doesn’t mean it’s what I want to have happen and that doesn’t mean that other things won’t be happening. As such, over the next week or so I’m going to do a series of posts covering the following areas:

– My 2012 EMR and Health IT Wish List (things I wish would happen)
– Predictions on EHR adoption in 2012
– 2012 EHR and Health IT Noise (things that will make a noise, but have little impact)

If you have other topics you think I should cover, I’d love to hear any other ideas you have. If I have something of value to offer, then I’ll be happy to add it to my list. Should be a fun week prognosticating about the future of EHR and health IT. I hope you’ll join me in the comments with your own commentary on what we should expect and I invite other bloggers to do similar posts around these topics.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

3 Comments

  • I just wanted to provide some feedback on an ACO HIT Connect conference I attended in Miami last week. I was hoping for more discussion about the type of required infrastructure but they really just glazed over that topic. The speaker from the ONC said there’s no model for how IT infrastructure should be setup, but for an ACO, it will require a robust network infrastructure, EMR and HIE. The topic that kept coming up was how important data is going to play a role. Data analytics, reporting, dashboards, data aggregation, clinical data and claims data for the ACO to measure what they are doing and make appropriate changes as they analyze the data. Vendors that can provide the data reporting requirements are going to get the business of the ACOs. Access to “Big Data”, “real time data” and linked data is going to give the ACO’s the competitive advantage to survive and be successful.

    One of the speakers predicted that the future of practices with less than about 15 physicians in limited. The solo docs and small groups will eventually join a hospital, larger group or become a part of an ACO.

    The ACO’s will need to provide quality healthcare, manage chronic illness, manage a population of patients and focus on prevention and outcomes. There’s a shift in philosophy from managing illness to managing health. This cannot be done without the proper technologies in place. Data is critical to identifying who is at risk and who your patient population consists of. B/c ACO’s will comprise of so many healthcare professionals, and many of them will be be using different systems (EMRs), getting the data out of the EHR and putting it into repositories that allow you to work with the data better will be required to be successful.

    Information delivery – leveraging analytics for insight that drive decisions and process changes.

    CMR systems will be needed for patient outreach.
    -possible call centers will be needed to follow up with patients -social media will likely play a big role as well.

  • Thanks for sharing Brian. This is a really great summary of the ACO movement. I’m going to have to consider tapping into this for a future post.

  • The meaningful use protocol is getting to be almost as bad as the vote counting in Florida> Why can’t there be a simple page with the dos and don’ts and be done with it? Everything out government does has to be so buried in double talk that the real meaning and intent is missed.
    CCHIT has added to the problem by creating a monster with their certification methods. Hell either you pass or you don’t it can be that simple and yest there doesn’t have to be 36 different parts to it too. Spell out what you want the answers to and get them don’t confuse everyone.
    CPOE should be exactly what is stands for nothing else.. and the Same with SOAP NOTES just for notes and yes it can be in email form as can CPOE, KISS IS THE BEST WAY TO GET ANYTHING DONE BECAUSE IT IS LIKE A CHILD’S MIND, pure and directly to the point. It isn’t bogged down with trying to hide anything or mix things up.. it is either black or white , yes or no.. that simple..
    Let’s do it that way and from now on KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID and everyone will be better off.
    I am sure that there are others that share some of my feelings so why not join with me and let’s try to simplify Meaningful use.. it will be better for all and yes even the Government too..

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