Halamka looks back on health IT in 2014

"2014 was a year of increasing stress for CIOs, accelerating workflow change, regulatory burden, unquenchable demand for automation and rapid technology evolution," wrote John Halamka, MD, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, writing a post for his blog, Life as a Healthcare CIO.

In the post, Halamka cites the Affordable Care Act, Meaningful Use, the HIPAA Omnibus Rule and ICD-10 as the most significant health IT issues in 2014. Meeting the needs of the pateint-centered medical homes, accountable care and care management "spawned a new type of software--the care management medical record." It became clear last year that "the EHR is just a starting point and over time there will be a new generation of tools used by clinicians and non-clinician extenders to keep people healthy, not just record their encounters when they’re sick. Hopefully we’ll see maturing products in 2015."

2014 also was the first year during which "we could take a look back at the Meaningful Use program," he wrote. While Stage 1 laid a foundation for EHR adotpion, Stage 2 was "aspirational and a few of the provisions...required an ecosystem that does not yet exist." Halamka does say that the only way out of the challenge is changing the attestation period in 2015 to 90 days.

While Halamka acknowledges that ICD-9 is incomplete and doesn't include several important disease states, "ICD-10-PCS is so complex that it is unlikely clinicians will not be able to produce the documentation needed to justify a code." The cost of lost productivity after implementation "will be enormous," he says, suggesting that SNOMED might have been the best way to proceed.

Looking ahead, Halamka says "2015 may see less new regulatory requirements, more mature products in the marketplace and an increased role for the private sector to innovate. As always, I remain optimistic for the future and am ready for the challenges ahead."

Read the entire post.