AMDIS, shutdown top health IT news this week

This week, we partnered with AMDIS and Elsevier to present the first AMDIS Fall Symposium which covered challenges and opportunities for health information exchange (HIE), EHRs, care coordination, the changing physician-patient relationship and more.

One of the top topics in health IT these days is the state of Meaningful Use Stage 2. John Glaser, PhD, CEO of Health Services, Siemens Healthcare, said he agrees with the numerous calls to extend the program’s deadlines.

The program has “not exactly been the redesign of care we had in mind,” he said. “We rush. I sometimes see in our customer base people who just want the check. They say ‘help me do whatever I need to do to get the money.’”

The legislation that launched Meaningful Use was “an extraordinary effort to recast health IT. As bright as the people who wrote the legislation are, it’s not possible to get it all right. You will make mistakes. At this junction, let’s reassess what’s working and what’s not. I think it’s worth extending for a year.”

Jonathan Leviss, MD, chief medical officer of the Rhode Island Quality Institute (RIQI), shared the state’s experience with avoiding hospital readmissions through an alert system deployed through its HIE. The program alerts primary care providers about hospital care so they could follow up appropriately. Once they started, the providers said the messages weren’t helpful because they weren’t getting useful information.

Through an assessment of technology, people and processes, the organization found numerous problems but small tweaks made it much more effective. Patient satisfaction has increased and RIQI has found that for those primary care providers receiving these alerts, they have a 10 percent lower 30-day readmission rate. “That drop translates to avoiding 68 readmissions a month and $860,000 saved.” If CurrentCare and the hospital alert system expands to the rest of the state’s population, the same 10 percent drop in readmissions would save $7 million.

Meanwhile, the inability of the federal government to agree on a budget began a shutdown this week that hits the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for health IT (ONC) particularly hard. HHS must furlough 40,512 staff and retain 37,686 staff as of day two of a near-term funding hiatus, according to HHS’ fiscal year 2014 contingency staffing plan. Only four of ONC’s 184 employees are avoiding furloughs, with three of them charged with facilitating the orderly phase-down and suspension of operations.

How is your organization impacted by the government shutdown? Are you experiencing concrete and measurable gains, such as avoidable hospital readmissions, through your HIE? Please share your experience.

Beth Walsh

Clinical Innovation + Technology editor