AHIMA: 2012's health IT must-see list revealed
 |
Published in the January edition, the article listed seven initiatives for health IT professionals to target in 2012: ICD-10, accountable care organizations (ACOs), meaningful use, health information exchanges (HIEs), privacy and security, EHRs and data.
ICD-10
Health IT professionals have had time to prepare and with implementation set for this October, they will begin modifying "work processes, modeling the reimbursement impact, devising strategies for managing the immediate transition period and assessing coder staff competency in preparation of intensive coder training.”
Chris Dimick, Journal of AHIMA staff writer, maintained that a lack of preparation by many providers and vendors may be apparent by year’s end.
Accountable care organizations
The Shared Savings Program began Jan. 3, and to meet the set of 33 quality measures established to qualify for reimbursements, ACOs’ health IT employees must adeptly utilize HIE and EHRs in order to collect the data for reporting requirements, according to Dimick.
Meaningful use
“This will be a crucial year for the program and its participants,” he wrote. “Stage 1 will enter its second year, adoption of the released Stage 2 requirements will begin and discussion on Stage 3 will be under way.”
Dimick added that the increased difficulty expected of Stage 2 requirements will create “a need for providers to redesign the entire record creation process, affecting everything from physician documentation to transcription contracts and billing.”
Health information exchange
“The state-level HIEs must become self-sufficient before funding runs out, but recent studies conducted by industry groups show many HIEs do not have solid sustainability plans in place,” Dimick wrote. “With only two more years of anticipated government funding left, 2012 will be a vital year for HIEs to identify a solid sustainability plan and get it in place.”
In addition to the quest for sustainability, he wrote that some believe health IT professionals “will be addressing the complexities of making their organization’s information available and processing the information that pours into their facilities. Data integrity, patient identity checks and privacy and security all must be addressed when a health IT professional’s facility joins an HIE.”
Privacy and security
Final rules detailing the HITECH Act’s modifications to HIPAA are expected in 2012 and compliance could be expected by year’s end, Dimick wrote, adding that some of these changes are going to be difficult to implement.
EHRs
There will be changes to the way providors use EHRs and how EHRs share data in 2012, Dimick reported, providing the example of the growing implementation of patient portals. “While patient portals may cut down some manual release of information work, managing the portal and ensuring data remain accurate and confidential will remain an important and time-consuming job for health IT professionals.”
Data
Christened "the new bottom line," Dimick concluded that as healthcare leans on data to help solve its problems, "it will learn something health IT professionals have known for years–data integrity currently isn’t what it should be. Throughout 2012, this problem will get more attention, placing health IT professionals squarely in a position to help find solutions and finally leverage EHR data for a better, cheaper healthcare system.”