What Happened with EMR and Health IT in 2013?

As we wrap up 2013, I thought I’d take a look back at some of the major things that happened in 2013. They will be topics you’re very familiar with, but hopefully this will tie a nice bow on the top of 2013 as we look towards 2014.

ICD-10 Got Real – There are still many organizations that aren’t focusing on ICD-10 or that are underestimating it, but for the most part I’m seeing a lot of concern around ICD-10. I’ve started a whole series on ICD-10 and as I’ve been preparing posts the impact of ICD-10 is going to be huge. I think people are just starting to realize it and 7-8 months from now there’s going to be a lot of organizations that are going to go into panic mode. Some of the panic they could solve if they started working on ICD-10 today. Some of the panic will likely come from outside vendors who end up not delivering ICD-10 the way they should.

ACO’s Are Still a Mystery – Some of the ACO work from the government is coming into some focus, but that barely feels like an ACO to me. Of course, it’s all how you define an ACO. I mostly see defensive efforts by organizations trying to group and align themselves with other organizations for whatever reimbursement changes come down the pipe. However, I don’t think any of them really know what’s coming (and I don’t claim to know either).

Meaningful Use Stage 2 Hit Us – We got a meaningful use stage 2 extension and a meaningful use stage 3 delay, but we didn’t get what many were hoping would be a meaningful use stage 2 delay. That means organizations have little choice but to proceed with meaningful use stage 2. As I’ve seen more and more organizations get into MU stage 2, I’ve seen two main actions: workarounds and complaints.

I believe the inverse relationship between incentives and requirements is starting to become an issue. It will certainly blow up when the even more challenging meaningful use stage 3 requirements hit and the EHR incentives are gone.

Consolidation (Hospital and Physician Practice) – Everyone tells me private practice acquisition is cyclical and at some point we’ll see a return to independent doctors. However, I haven’t seen that cycle happen yet. All I see our hospitals acquiring practices like crazy. Not to mention hospitals joining together as well. I wonder if the prediction I heard of only 5-10 major health systems will play out.

HIPAA Omnibus Landed (and is mostly forgotten) – HIPAA Omnibus is in place whether a practice likes it or not. Most never realized it went into affect or have forgotten it already. Watch for 2014 to be the year that it starts biting organizations in the backside. Give us 4-5 stories about HIPAA Omnibus making a physician’s life miserable and then we’ll see more people getting HIPAA training, fixing their business associate agreements, and maybe even implementing encryption on their devices. Maybe I should have added this to my 2014 wish list I’ll post tomorrow.

Did I miss anything? Probably. So, let’s hear what I missed in the comments. Also, I made some similar comments with a hospital focus over on Hospital EMR and EHR.

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.

   

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