News & Views

Halamka: Every hospital with more than 50 beds needs a CMIO

Every hospital larger than 50 beds should have a full or part-time designated CMIO due to increasing demands for clinical workflow automation, meaningful use and healthcare reform, wrote thought leader John Halamka, MD, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, CIO at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston, on his blog, Life as a Healthcare CIO.

"Given the daunting array of clinical IT requirements over the next five years, CMIOs will be increasingly important," he continued.

Halamka also said that clinical applications are only as good as the processes they automate. Clinician stakeholders working with a CMIO should re-engineer workflows, document requirements and then begin software implementation. Achieving consensus among clinicians is challenging, he said. The role of the CMIO, as a trusted practicing clinician, is to create consensus around software configuration and decision support roles.

"Nothing is perfect and clinical systems implementation will always be a journey, balancing compliance, security, ease of use, automation of manual processes and safety," Halamka wrote. "The CMIO can run processes which engage clinicians in priority setting and resource allocation decision making. Although the projects they want will likely be done at a slower pace than they'd prefer, they will understand the balance of time, resources and scope because they were involved in creating the plan."PPACA suggests that, if Wisconsin does not establish an operational and effective insurance exchange by January 2013, the federal government will step in and do so.

Wisconsin governor rejects insurance exchange money

Embattled Republican Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker, turned down $37 million in federal funding awarded to help implement a healthcare insurance exchange. Walker declared that Wisconsin would not pursue the implementation of the exchange until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), which is expected this month.

"Stopping the encroachment of Obamacare in our state, which has the potential to have a devastating impact on Wisconsin's economy, is a top priority. Wisconsin has been a leader and innovator in healthcare reform for two decades, and we have achieved a high level of health insurance coverage without federal mandates," Walker said regarding PPACA. Meanwhile, PPACA suggests that, if Wisconsin does not establish an operational and effective insurance exchange by January 2013, the federal government will step in and do so.

Survey: Majority of CIOs feel positively about HIEs

Despite some concerns, a recent survey found that there was an overall positive opinion regarding the benefits of health information exchanges (HIEs) with 70 percent of executives reporting that they felt positively about HIEs. Healthcare consulting firm Beacon Partners surveyed more than 200 healthcare executives to determine the value of and interest in HIEs.

While 64 percent of respondents said that the CIO was responsible for HIE development within their organization, 46 percent reported that their organization did not have a department or oversight group to oversee the initiative.

Asked about their HIE development concerns, the largest group of respondents (41 percent) reported that high start-up costs were their biggest concern. Regarding budgets for developing HIEs, 38 percent reported less than $1 million, fewer than 10 percent reported more than $3 million and 21 percent reported that they did not have a budget for HIE development.

Medical societies disagree over ICD-10 timeline

Several major nationwide professional medical associations have launched campaigns to prolong the current ICD-10 implementation timeline, while others are encouraging providers to proceed full steam ahead.

For instance, the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) urged the healthcare community to continue preparing for the transition to the ICD-10 classification system, warning that the U.S. Congress may not act on requests to stop ICD-10 implementation and let stakeholders design and adopt a new classification system to replace ICD-9-CM.

Meanwhile, the American Medical Association (AMA) and other healthcare organizations have launched an effort to block implementation of ICD-10. In fact, AMA CEO James L. Madara, MD, wrote to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to urge him to take action against the implementation of ICD-10, informing him that the transition to ICD-10 as mandated by HIPAA would place a heavy burden on physicians without offering a direct benefit to individual patient care.

Kaiser patients can access records on mobile devices

A new application (app) for Android devices allows nine million Kaiser Permanente patients to access their own medical information on mobile devices through a mobile-optimized website. Mobile device users can get full access to their information from the Kaiser Permanente health record system with the mobile-optimized version of kp.org.

The Android app is free and users of other mobile devices can access the same set of care support tools at no charge through the new mobile-optimized member website, which is available through smartphone internet browsers.

Executives on the move

• Sameer Badlani, MD, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, has been appointed CMIO for the University of Chicago Medical Center, the 541-bed academic medical center and research institution.
• Amy J. Maneker, MD, has been named CMIO for Akron Children's Hospital in Akron, Ohio, a new position for the 253-bed pediatric facility.
• Brian A. Hannah, MD, has been appointed CMIO at Aria Health, a 477-bed provider in Northeast Philadelphia and Lower Bucks County in Pennsylvania.
• Drexel DeFord, Seattle Children's Hospital CIO and senior vice president, will serve as the 2012 Chair of CHIME's Board of Trustees.
• Rick Schooler, CIO and vice president of Orlando (Fla.) Health, is the recipient of the 2011 John E. Gall Jr. CIO of the Year award given by The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).