The American Medical Association (AMA) is reminding physicians that June 30 is the deadline to report on at least 10 electronic scripts to avoid the 2013 Medicare e-prescribing program penalty.
Claudia Williams, MS, director of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s (ONC) state health information exchange (HIE) program, offered a review of the ONC’s progress on HIE and its primary goals for 2012 during the National eHealth Collaborative's webinar on “ONC’s National HIE Strategy.”
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is offering a lifeline to eligible professionals and group practices participating in the Electronic Prescribing (eRx) Incentive Program Group Practice Reporting Option that weren’t successful e-prescribers in 2011, so they can avoid the 2013 eRx Incentive Program payment adjustment.
The American Medical Association (AMA), along with state and national medical specialty societies, have sent a letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) expressing serious concern about an onslaught of overlapping regulations that affect physicians. Programs with overlapping timelines include the value-based modifier, penalties under the e-prescribing program, physician quality reporting system and EHR incentive program, along with the transition to ICD-10.
LAS VEGAS—Outpatient settings now have an option to engage in a strategic performance measures initiative to improve preventive health outcomes through a health IT-enabled registry, based on positive outcomes presented Feb. 21 at the 2012 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference.
The U.S. is a leader in health IT use and adoption by physicians, according to a new eight-country study from consulting and technology services company Accenture. The study, which includes Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Singapore, Spain and the U.S., shows that the U.S. is one of the few countries in which health IT penetration is nearly equal among primary physicians and specialists.
E-prescribing offers benefits that can specifically help with the care and costs of chronically ill patients, and tech-savvy patients and providers are driving increased use.
Although most of California’s community pharmacies are able to receive electronic prescriptions, only 25 percent of the state’s physicians are currently electronically prescribing medications and just 16 percent of the state’s total prescriptions are routed electronically, according to Cal eConnect.
E-prescribing leads to a significant increase in first-fill medication adherence, according to a study from Surescripts. Analysis of de-identified data suggest that the increase in first-fill medication adherence combined with other e-prescribing benefits could, over the next 10 decade, lead to between $140 billion and $240 billion in healthcare savings and improved health outcomes.
Commercial electronic prescribing systems (e-prescribing) could substantially reduce prescribing error rates in hospital inpatients, according to a study published in this week's PLoS Medicine.
Farzad Mostashari, MD, national coordinator for Health IT, clued the nation into five health IT trends expected to take off as healthcare reform progresses and predicted that 2012 is the year that health IT “truly comes of age.”
Researchers studying the implementation of stand-alone e-prescribing systems in ambulatory medical practices determined that although e-prescribing benefits are apparent, deriving these benefits will require clinical decision support (CDS) based on presentation of accurate and complete formulary and benefit and medication history data, according to a report published January in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.
The ramp-up in proportions of information functions done electronically could make elusive targets even further out of range for many specialty practices, leaving them unable to tap the HITECH Act incentives in Stage 2 and position themselves for the baseline computer capacity to participate in the care coordination that will be an essential part of performance-based payment models, said Thomas C. Barber, MD, chair of a group within the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons that advocates for the adoption of EMRs by its membership.
Prescriptions handwritten by 78 providers’ offices over the course of approximately one year contained more than two errors per prescription written, an error rate that researchers believe could be significantly lowered through the use of e-prescribing systems, which automatically resolve instances of illegibility; a rate that could be further improved through the use of systems with clinical decision support (CDS).
More than half of office-based physicians are now ordering prescriptions electronically, according to Surescripts, a health IT services provider based in Arlington, Va.
Work toward widespread use of e-prescribing has come a long way in a short period of time, but there’s still a long way to go before it is completely accepted and its flaws are fixed, according to the presenters of a Nov. 16 webinar cosponsored by Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The sustainability of health information exchanges (HIEs) may come down to marketing and a reasonable business model, according to Scott Momrow, vice president of the Healthcare Information Xchange New York
(HIXNY), a nonprofit organization designated as a regional health information organization (RHIO) by the New York State Department of Health.
Seventy-five percent of hospitals plan to purchase new health information exchange (HIE) tools, according to a new report from healthcare technology research and advisory firm CapSite. The largest group of respondents plan to purchase this technology in 12 to 24 months.
The rate of medication nonadherence remains high—24 percent—however, e-prescribing may eventually help to decrease this rate, according to a study published in the November issue of the
American Journal of Medicine.
LAS VEGAS—If EHRs are going to be optimized to increase efficiency and the bottom line, administrators should consider more inclusivity in the implementation process, staff and physician workflows, training time and a phased-in implementation, according to an Oct. 24 presentation at the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) 2011 annual conference.
