From the Editor: The Year Ahead for Health IT
As CMIO celebrated the end of 2010, we were also looking ahead to what promises to be a pivotal year for healthcare in general and healthcare IT in particular.
Some regulatory milestones rang in the New Year. For example, January 1 marked the beginning of medical loss ratio regulations that mandate payors spend 80 to 85 percent of customer premiums on healthcare-related costs, and 15 to 20 percent on administrative costs. Definitions of what constitutes a healthcare-related cost versus an administrative one will probably evolve, and this is certainly an area to watch.
January was the month in which CMS was expected to issue guidelines for accountable care organizations (ACOs), with the first demonstration ACOs to be functioning by 2012. Even without guidelines, ACOs got an increasing amount of coverage, especially during the second half of 2010, and this will no doubt continue. Turn to “ACOs: The IT Challenges Within” for a look at some of the technology challenges that healthcare organizations will face as they transition to this new way of caring for patients.
January 3 also marked the date by which meaningful use attestation infrastructure—the systems that will enable healthcare providers to demonstrate their meaningful use of electronic healthcare data—should be up and running, ready to process the first applications. This will be the year when meaningful use gets real for many providers and facilities, and we’re girding to cover meaningful use from all sides.
Fast forwarding to May, the first meaningful use incentive payments are slated to begin. It will be interesting to see whether the early birds are followed by a flood or a trickle of additional applicants this year. CMIOs are not very confident their facilities will achieve meaningful use in 2011, according to a survey of this group at the CMIO Summit we hosted in Atlanta. Their confidence builds in 2012, however, for their facilities to meet the requirements. (See the Dashboard charts on Page 16).
2011 will see 4G networks arriving in more U.S. cities, paving the way for improved smartphone service. Healthcare applications could benefit from 4G, which features shared infrastructure and essentially provides voice-over-IP service, because it will enable smartphones and other mobile devices to handle more information and to integrate point-of-service information into EMRs. Pilot programs are set to take advantage of this wider pipe and other advances in monitoring to rapidly assess patients en route to the ER and to keep patients safe(r) at home, as we report in “Remotely Monitoring Patients: Pilot Programs Take Off.”
There will be plenty of vital information to cover in the coming year, and CMIO will continue to filter out the noise and provide the analysis and best practices you need to keep your organization IT-optimized for 2011 and beyond.
Some regulatory milestones rang in the New Year. For example, January 1 marked the beginning of medical loss ratio regulations that mandate payors spend 80 to 85 percent of customer premiums on healthcare-related costs, and 15 to 20 percent on administrative costs. Definitions of what constitutes a healthcare-related cost versus an administrative one will probably evolve, and this is certainly an area to watch.
January was the month in which CMS was expected to issue guidelines for accountable care organizations (ACOs), with the first demonstration ACOs to be functioning by 2012. Even without guidelines, ACOs got an increasing amount of coverage, especially during the second half of 2010, and this will no doubt continue. Turn to “ACOs: The IT Challenges Within” for a look at some of the technology challenges that healthcare organizations will face as they transition to this new way of caring for patients.
January 3 also marked the date by which meaningful use attestation infrastructure—the systems that will enable healthcare providers to demonstrate their meaningful use of electronic healthcare data—should be up and running, ready to process the first applications. This will be the year when meaningful use gets real for many providers and facilities, and we’re girding to cover meaningful use from all sides.
Fast forwarding to May, the first meaningful use incentive payments are slated to begin. It will be interesting to see whether the early birds are followed by a flood or a trickle of additional applicants this year. CMIOs are not very confident their facilities will achieve meaningful use in 2011, according to a survey of this group at the CMIO Summit we hosted in Atlanta. Their confidence builds in 2012, however, for their facilities to meet the requirements. (See the Dashboard charts on Page 16).
2011 will see 4G networks arriving in more U.S. cities, paving the way for improved smartphone service. Healthcare applications could benefit from 4G, which features shared infrastructure and essentially provides voice-over-IP service, because it will enable smartphones and other mobile devices to handle more information and to integrate point-of-service information into EMRs. Pilot programs are set to take advantage of this wider pipe and other advances in monitoring to rapidly assess patients en route to the ER and to keep patients safe(r) at home, as we report in “Remotely Monitoring Patients: Pilot Programs Take Off.”
There will be plenty of vital information to cover in the coming year, and CMIO will continue to filter out the noise and provide the analysis and best practices you need to keep your organization IT-optimized for 2011 and beyond.