Patient matching, improvements in diabetes outcomes, software recall, more
Health IT developments this week include the positive effects of EHR use on diabetes care management and a retail chain's foray into healthcare innovation. Here are five developments you need to know this week.
1. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) this week announced a new patient matching effort designed to identify and recommend standardization of the basic attributes most commonly used. The collaborative Patient Matching Initiative is designed to help identify the common denominators and best practices being used by private sector healthcare delivery systems and federal agencies, according a HealthIT Buzz blog post by Lee Stevens, policy director of ONC’s state health information exchange program.
2. A study indicates that EHR use in clinical settings helped drive down emergency room visits and hospitalizations for patients with diabetes. Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study found that patients visited the emergency room 29 fewer times per 1,000 patients and were hospitalized 13 fewer times per 1,000 patients annually after implementation.
3. Retail chain Target is entering healthcare innovation with the announcement of its Target Simplicity Challenge, a nationwide search for innovative ideas to simplify healthcare. The challenge seeks ideas that help people make positive lifestyle and prevention choices, and those ideas that help people live well with a chronic condition.
4. EHR software used in 20 states has been voluntarily recalled by the vendor, according to a document filed with the Food & Drug Administration. UnitedHealth Group issued a voluntary recall for emergency department EHR software because of an error that caused physicians' notes about patient prescriptions to drop out of their records.
5. Entities will require about 32.1 million hours to comply with the HIPPA omnibus bill, set to go into effect Sept. 23, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. That includes 3.65 million hours for healthcare provider dissemination and acknowledgement of notice of privacy practices for protected health information and 700,000 hours for organization uses and disclosures for which individual authorization is required.
How are any of these developments impacting your organization? Please share your thoughts.
Beth Walsh
Clinical Innovation + Technology editor
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.