e-CareManagement blog

Chronic Disease Management • Technology • Strategy • Issues and Trends

Comments to ONC: PCAST HIT Report Becomes a Political Piñata

The PCAST Report on Health IT has become a political piñata.  Early Feedback on PCAST  Like many of my colleagues, I was taken aback by the release of the Report in early December 2010 — I didn’t know quite what to make of it. Response in the first week of release was:  Limited. The first commentaries were primarily by technical and/or clinical [...]

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Is HITECH Working? #3: ONC got it right on the 3 major policy interpretations: Meaningful Use, Certification, Standards

We concluded our last post in this series with a blunt prediction that “key physicians will sit on the sidelines” and that clinician non-adoption of EHR technology is a potential “deal-breaker for the success of HITECH”. While this might sound like a criticism of the way HITECH has been implemented, it’s not intended that way — it’s a [...]

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Chilmark Needs to Chill Out on CCR/CCD Findings

John Moore of Chilmark Research and I agree on things 90+ percent of the time. He even thanked me personally for our collegial relationship in a Thanksgiving Day essay on his blog. However…I can’t help but comment on John’s misleading story “CCD Standard Gaining Traction, CCR Fading” in The Health Care Blog. He writes: In a number of [...]

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John Halamka’s Stunning 180: “Dogs and Cats Should Live in Harmony”

The King of the Cats has just acknowledged that indeed cats and dogs should co-exist peacefully. Dr. John Halamka — Vice Chair of the HIT Standards Committee of the ONC and one of the most vocal and influential figures in health IT — writes a blog post this morning entitled “The Genius of AND”. Halamka reasonably summarizes [...]

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The Third Rail in HITECH Implementation: “Please Don’t Make Us All Speak Latin”

By Vince Kuraitis and Steven Waldren MD, MS.  Dr Waldren is Director of the Center for Health Information Technology at the American Academy of Family Practice (AAFP). Two issues have rightfully surfaced front and center in the public’s understanding of HITECH Act implementation: ” definition of “Meaningful Use” of EHRs, and ” definition of “certification” [...]

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CCHIT Should Support BOTH the HL7 CCD and the ASTM CCR for PHRs.

The federal government sponsored Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT ) is undertaking a certification process for personal health records (PHRs) . The CCHIT PHR Work Group has invited public comment on the First Draft of the PHR Certification Criteria . The current draft of the PHR Certification Criteria specifies use of the HL7 [...]

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Untangling the Electronic Health Data Exchange

by David C. Kibbe MD, MBA The purpose of this post is to help a non-technical audience untangle some of the confusion regarding health data exchange standards, and particularly come to a better understanding of the similarities and  differences between the Continuity of Care Record (CCR) standard and the CDA Continuity of Care Document (CCD). [...]

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Healthcare Informatics Webinar: Google, Microsoft, & Dossia Create the Personal Health Information Network

What are companies like Google, Microsoft, and Dossia (sponsored by Intel, Wal-Mart, AT&T and others) hoping to accomplish in health care? What is the emerging Personal Health Information Network (PHIN) and why should you care? What’s the Continuity of Care Record (CCR) Standard, and how is it destined to become an initial focal point of data exchange initiatives? Why is the PHIN [...]

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Birth Announcement: the Personal Health Information Network (PHIN)

Vince Kuraitis and David C. Kibbe, MD MBA  The Internet and digital technologies have transformed many aspects of our lives over the past twenty years.  We can get cash at ATMs all over the world; we can book our own airline reservations; we can shop and get best prices over the Internet. Why hasn’t this [...]

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