Jerry Fahrni

Tag: EMR

  • Comments and discussion regarding allergy post

    My post from yesterday about allergies spurred some great comments on Twitter from @omowizard and @psweetman. I read the discussion between @omowizard and @psweetman with great interest and wish I would have been awake to participate. Unfortunately I was already counting sheep when the conversation took place. The discussion also made me realize how difficult it is to carry on a serious conversation with the 140 character limit imposed by Twitter. What we need is a place where a conversation can extend beyond the 140 character limit. Oh, wait, we have that; friendfeed. I digress.
    (more…)

  • Are e-patients better informed or just harder to treat?

    I found an interesting article at EHR Bloggers that talks about the possibility of easy access to information via the internet resulting in difficult-to-treat patients and higher healthcare costs.

    The concern raised in the NPR article describes the effect of information dissemination without context or interpretation – it happens anyway, with direct-to-consumer advertising in all forms of media, and it happens even faster with the Internet. And when patients, armed with these “facts” and the questions they raise, come to their physicians – the physician is often hard-pressed to put things into perspective. The result? Often, very-low-yield tests (or even unnecessary tests that raise the risk of harm through adverse events) and unnecessarily expensive treatments are agreed-to, simply because it’s the path of least resistance.

    The problem isn’t with informed patients; it’s the model we’ve developed in our current healthcare system. The article speaks about limited time for physicians secondary to fee-for-service care. This is similar to what retail pharmacies have done with much of outpatient pharmacy services. Most retail pharmacists will tell you they spend more time fighting with insurance companies then they do talking with patients about their medications. One of the most enjoyable times of my pharmacy career was a short stint I spent working for a small independent pharmacy in San Jose. The owner/pharmacist that I worked with had a genuine interest in his patients, knew them by name and offered sound therapeutic advice. His patients appreciated his time and knowledge and were better informed to make important decision because of it.

    The article goes on to offer some thought provoking ideas for closing the gap between our current healthcare model and well informed patients. It’s interesting stuff. If you have a moment I recommend you read the entire thing.

  • LIJ Health System to subsidize EMR deployment in New York

    InformationWeek Healthcare: “The rollout is believed to be the nation’s largest EMR deployment to date, said North Shore LIJ CIO John Bosco. The health system serves five million people in the New York metro area, operating 14 hospitals, 18 long-term care facilities, five home-health agencies, dozens of outpatient centers, and a hospice network. Under the North Shore LIJ Electronic Health Record initiative, 1,200 staff physicians and 5,800 affiliated physicians will be offered subsidized EMR systems. EMR software will be provided by Allscripts and hosted using a cloud-based model by an unnamed Allscripts partner, Bosco said.” – The article goes on to say that North Shore LIJ will subsidize approximately 85% of the cost and allow physicians to keep any reimbursement earned under the ARRA. I’d say that is a pretty smart move on the part of LIJ. After all, getting physicians to use new technology is a difficult process. With this offer LIJ will get EMR use entrenched in the minds of approximately 7000 physicians in the New York area. It will be very interesting to see how things go over the next 5 years.

  • The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is not without risk

    The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) has created quite a flutter of activity in healthcare during the past several months. I can’t remember a time when something was such a popular topic. Everywhere you look, Twitter, Facebook, personal blogs, professional blogs, and so on are talking about how to demonstrate “meaningful use” and get their hot little hands on some cash.

    While the idea is sound, the implementation has something to be desired. The overwhelming attention to the definition of “meaningful use” and the looming 2011 timeline has created some unwanted side effects to the ARRA. Hospitals have started throwing project plans in reverse for significant revision or throwing them out the window and starting over all together. Projects that may have been in the pipeline for months, or years, are now taking a back seat to the ARRA requirements. Project development and timelines are involved processes that are designed to work around several variables such as capital budgets, current software and hardware specs, and available human resources.

    Many healthcare systems have yet to develop a plan to implement many of the requirements necessary to meet the ARRA “meaningful use” criteria. If a healthcare systems wasn’t ready to begin the process at any time over the past several years what makes the US government think they’ll be ready just because they say so? Is the infrastructure in place? Do they have the resources to not only implement, but support the new systems as well? These are all questions that people should be asking. I for one am disappointed in our facility as we have decided to immediately move forward with projects that weren’t slated for another 18-24 months. To make this happen other projects have been placed lower in the priority queue, creating a lack of resources that risk jeopardizing the quality of both implementations.

    Healthcare systems should not be directed down a path that they feel unprepared to face. Doing so will only invite failure.

  • Hypatia research study only states the obvious

    EMR Daily News: “Hypatia Research, LLC today released a report entitled “What Healthcare CIOs Need to Know About ARRA & EHR: Healthcare Technology Solutions & Service Providers”. Beyond the obvious value of centralized access to patient data, Hypatia Research discerned that electronic records systems provide health providers with multiple benefits: 1. ACCURACY& ERROR-CHECKS; 2. REPORTING; 3. MEDICAL NOWLEDGE-BASE; 4. NEAR-TIME ACTIONABLE INSIGHT” – If your CIO needs a research firm to understand what an electronic records system should provide, then you’re healthcare system is in deep doo-doo. This is all basic stuff that should have been on the radar long ago.

  • “What’d I miss?” – Week of September 6th

    As usual there were a lot of things that happened during the week, and not all of it was pharmacy or technology related. Here’s a quick look at some of the stuff I found interesting.
    (more…)

  • Yep, there’s an EMR app for the iPhone

    Healthcare IT Consultant Blog: “It appears Caretools has thought of this, offering its iChart EHR for the iPhone, immediately available to anyone on the iTunes store. Before you scoff that it must be a limited-functionality, toy of an EHR, consider this: it offers ePrescribing, transmission of lab reports, ICD9-compliant billing code functionality, and a sophisticated menu system to quickly create SOAP and Procedure notes. It might not be CCHIT-certified (yet) or guarantee your eligibility for “meaningful use” funding, but at such a low price point, it could be a great way to get your physicians comfortable with standard EHR functionality.” – I took a quick jaunt over to the Caretools website and gave the application the once over. I think it’s pretty cool. At a mere $139.99 it’s about the cheapest EMR system you’re going to find on the market. You can read more about it at the iPhone Life website. Next thing you know, you’ll even be able to make phone calls directly from your iPhone.

  • Apparently some pharmacists are worried about personal health records

    Healthcare IT Consultant Blog: “Pharmacists’ representatives have claimed that use of private health record services such as Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault could risk fragmentation of electronic patient records. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain said “the proliferation of these systems and indiscriminate use” could lead to information on drug allergies, possible interactions, duplications or dose adjustments not being available when it was needed. The society, which was responding to a consultation by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics on medical profiling and online medicine, said there could be “serious patient safety implications”. It argued that the single health record supports the seamless transfer of care between primary and secondary settings and promoted multi- disciplinary working.” – I don’t necessarily agree with “the society” about personal health records. Personal health records – like medication lists carried in wallets, purses, and pockets – serve as additional information to an already detailed health system record. The technology is in its infancy and further growth and development should be encouraged. I believe it empowers the individual with enough control to become interested in their own care. I wouldn’t remove a patient allergy from the pharmacy system based solely on the information in a patient’s personal medical record, but would certainly investigate the opposite. First hand information directly from the patient is a valuable commodity. I remember interviewing patients upon admission to Long/Moffit Hospital on the UCSF campus when I was a 4th year pharmacy student. Many times asking the right questions led to the patient remembering something they had forgotten. If that information would have been in a digital personal medical record, the patient’s lack of memory becomes a non-issue. UCSF had the luxury of 30 pharmacy students running around talking to patients. Most hospitals aren’t so lucky.

  • “What’d I miss?” – Week of August 2

    As usual there were a lot of things that happened during the week, and not all of it was pharmacy or technology related. Here’s a quick look at some of the stuff I found interesting.
    (more…)

  • One physician’s less than stellar opinion of EMRs

    The Healthcare IT Guy: “Physicians know that better exists. They have experienced Google, Amazon and e-Bay. Game lovers know that Electronic Arts’ “Tiberium,” now 15 years old, exceeds the capabilities of their professional health care software. They know from Yahoo and MSN the value of configuring a home page suited to delivering niche-information of their own preference. They know from using Word and Word Perfect that they can create precision documents merely by tweaking a template. They know they can use voice commands to make a phone call on their Blackberry. They know that they can find drug information more easily on Google than proprietary software. They suspect that if their EHRs and EMRs had physician-specific home page functionality, that they could drop and drag orders, answer FAQs, dictate letters, and save time with templates with many fewer clicks. Ordering medications should be as safe and uncomplicated as using E*Trade.” – Once again I ask you, healthcare vs. consumer tech, who’s more advanced? In reality a good EHR/EMR should be like a microwave oven; just open the door, push a few buttons, and pull out your finished product in 30 seconds. Most people don’t worry about how the microwave oven works, they just use it. Like the rest of use, physicians want simplistic design with ultimate functionality. Who can blame them, really, but they will have to give a little as the technology is still in it’s infancy within healthcare. For some yet to be determined reason, healthcare is always behind other industries when it comes to high-tech. Read the entire article if you get the opportunity, it contains some great information.