CHIME | EMR and HIPAA

Healthcare Groups Want Meaningful Use Evaluated Before Stage 3

Though the final rules for Meaningful Use Stage 3 aren’t due to take effect until 2016, ONC has already made the draft rules available for public comment. And comments, to be sure, the agency is getting.

While various groups have chosen their own details to critique, the general consensus seems to be that ONC is getting ahead of itself and ought to give Meaningful Use Stage 1 and 2 a good hard look first.

Accordng to a nice summary from iHealthBeat, here’s where some of the major healthcare groups stand:

* The American Hospital Association is recommending that ONC fund a comprehensive evaluation of MU generally, and while it does, hold off on finalizing Stage 3 recommendations.

* CHIME, too, is asking ONC to evaluate the existing Meaningful Use program to decide whether achieving stage 3 is realistically possible by 2016.

* The Federation of American Hospitals is also arguing that ONC needs to evaluate current Meaningful Use requirements. Also, in its letter to ONC, the group argues that the existing structure of two years per stage doesn’t cut it.

* The AMA weighed in with its own recommendation that ONC evaluate Meaningful Use as is before moving ahead. It also suggested changing some thresholds to make them more reachable; greater flexibility in program requirements; change the certification process to address usability; and improve HIT’s capability to share patient data.

Personally, I think the idea of doing an extensive Meaningful Use evalulation sounds like a good one, and I hope ONC actually does so. When you’re setting new standards that affect so many providers, why not gather some data on how existing standards work?

Hospital CIO Jobs

Written by: John Lynn

The past couple days, I’ve been at the CHIME Fall CIO Forum in Palm Springs. This is my first time attending the event and it’s been an eye opening experience to say the least. It’s an amazing experience to have casual conversations with many in the healthcare IT industry and particularly with hospital CIOs.

While chatting with a former hospital CIO who now is on the vendor side, he made this fascinating observation:

I travel around and talk to a handful of CIOs every week as part of my job. When I meet with these hospital CIOs and hear about the challenges they face in their institution, I don’t get the feeling “That’s a really swell place to work. I want that job.”

In this current economic climate, it’s hard for anyone to feel really bad for a well paid hospital CIO (Yes, some are better paid than others). I acknowledge that many around the country would argue that a hospital CIO should be glad to have a job, and one that pays above the national average salary.

This general economic argument aside, I think it’s worth noting the challenging situation that many hospital CIOs face. Regardless of how much someone is paid, that doesn’t change the enormous challenge that most hospital CIOs confront every day.

Yes, we could start with the list of alphabet soup including: meaningful use, EHR, ACOs, 5010, HIE, and ICD-10 to name just a few. However, that’s just the beginning of what they’re dealing with in their jobs. Another major one worth mentioning is managing the budgets. It’s a complex, high pressure job whenever money is involved. Add in all the various maintenance, people management, process management, etc etc etc and the hospital CIO has a tough job.

This has never been more clear to me than at CHIME where the hospital CIOs all come and commiserate. I don’t think we should feel bad for these hospital CIOs and I don’t think they’re asking us to do that either. Although, it’s worth acknowledging that hospital CIOs face a tough and challenging job and I don’t see that changing any time soon. I appreciate those that are willing to take up the challenge and that perform so well in the face of such a changing environment.

Workforce and Regional Extension Center Challenges in HITECH Act

Written by: John Lynn

I just read one of the best blog posts I’d read in a long time. So much so that I just had to post part of it a link to it on my site. The post is called “Far From Shovel-Ready” by Anthony Guerra. I think you all should go and read the entire post. It’s well thought out and well written. I don’t know Anthony Guerra personally, but our paths have regularly crossed on the internet. I hope one day to have the pleasure of meeting him (maybe at HIMSS?).

His blog post starts out with this statement, “Legislation that took weeks to write will wreak havoc for years.” I’m not quite as certain as Anthony that it WILL wreak havoc. However, I’ve been warning of the possibilities of problems for a while now.

He describes the main points of his post like this:

My unpalatable HITECH morsel of the moment centers, generally, around the lack of healthcare IT workforce necessary to make the legislation’s goals a reality and, more specifically, the bizarre market dynamics that will be precipitated by the half-baked Regional Extension Center (REC) farce.

You can read the article for the rest of the details. However, those interested/worried/concerned about the workforce shortage in healthcare IT will enjoy this part of the article:

This means the fight for healthcare IT talent, which everyone agrees is heating up, will get doubly vicious, with hospitals, large practices, vendors and consultancies — and now 70 RECs — competing on what will be an uneven playing field for scarce talent.

Why uneven? Because the RECs will be able to pay fantasy wages, taxpayer funded wages, to woo the cream of your healthcare IT workforce.

At the recently held annual CHIME conference, I spoke to the CEO of a boutique HIT consultancy who said he, “needed 50 people TODAY,” but had no idea where they would come from. John Glaser, Ph.D., CIO at Partners Healthcare and senior special advisor to ONCHIT, recently wrote that those who employ healthcare IT talent must be sure their wages are fair and their work fulfilling, as poaching season is fast approaching.