Weekly roundup: Advances across the board

From a new dashboard to tablet advances to legislation designed to increase price transparency, several small steps were taken on almost every front on the healthcare landscape.

A new Medicare Chronic Conditions Dashboard is designed to further the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s goals for health promotion and the prevention and management of multiple chronic conditions. The dashboard offers researchers, physicians, public health professionals and policymakers an easy-to-use tool to get current data on where multiple chronic conditions occur, which services they require, and how much Medicare spends helping beneficiaries with multiple chronic conditions.

The dashboard is part of the Department of Health & Human Services' Initiative on Multiple Chronic Conditions, established in 2009. The Multiple Chronic Conditions: A Strategic Framework was developed to serve as a national roadmap for HHS as well as public and private stakeholders to use to coordinate and improve the health of beneficiaries with multiple chronic conditions.

A Mayo Clinic study found that tablet computers are an appropriate means to read or analyze electroencephalogram (EEG) results outside of the clinic or hospital. The findings showed that tablets cost less, weigh less and boot up faster but don’t offer as much in the way of screen size. Will the results of this study further drive the use of mobile devices or are they inconsequential in the growth of this market? Time will tell.

North Carolina state senators Bob Rucho and Harry Brown introduced legislation that seeks a number of measures to improve transparency in healthcare costs provided by hospitals and ambulatory surgical facilities.

The bill, Health Care Cost Reduction and Transparency Act of 2013, intends to disclose to the public the cost of the 50 most common episodes of care through the state’s health information exchange utilizing EHR software. If passed, the legislation would go into effect Jan. 1, 2014. It will be interesting to see whether other states follow suit with similar legislation as there are more and more calls for increased transparency.

Meanwhile, a recent survey found that most physicians want patients to engage in their own healthcare by updating their EHRs—but only to a point; 82 percent of U.S. physicians want patients to update their EHRs, but only 31 percent believe they should have full access to that record.

The survey found that the bulk of physicians agreed that patients should be able to update some or all of their health information such as demographics (95 percent), family medical history (88 percent), medications (86 percent) and allergies (85 percent). But when it comes to allowing patients to update their lab test results, only 47 percent of doctors found that appropriate.

A small sliver of physicians (21 percent) allow their patients online access to medical summaries or patient charts. But by and large, the vast majority (84 percent) report a strong commitment to promoting EHRs in their clinical practice.

How are these developments impacting your organization? Please share your thoughts.

Beth Walsh

Clinical Innovation + Technology editor