e-CareManagement blog

Chronic Disease Management • Technology • Strategy • Issues and Trends

Is Physician EHR Adoption Getting Past the Penguin Problem?

Remember the penguin problem described by economists? No one moves unless everyone moves, so no one moves.  Overcoming the penguin problem has a lot to do with creating expectations. A recent writing by Dr. James O’Connor in Physician Practice expresses a voice from the physician community that I’ve never heard before.  His essay is entitled “Meaningful Use — [...]

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Testing Technology vs. Enabling a System of Chronic Care – Results of the NIH Tele-HF Trial

by Randy Williams, MD FACC, CEO of Pharos Innovations The results from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored Tele-HF trial are in, and the findings are worth considering . The results are counter to most of the findings of other studies examining telemonitoring for heart failure and at face value are disappointing to us, and the [...]

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Walled Gardens vs. the Open Web: A Central Debate in Tech Finally Coming to Healthcare

The September issue of Wired magazine and an article in last Sunday’s New York Times illustrate a central debate in technology circles. The debate is not new — it’s being going on for two decades — but it has newfound vibrancy. The essence of the debate is about competing tech/business models: walled gardens vs. the [...]

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Six First-Take Reactions to Surescripts Network Expansion

Yesterday Surescripts announced their new Clinical Interoperability Services: Extended Network Connectivity – As a network of networks, Surescripts will support and enable the exchange of all types of clinical messages between EHRs, HIEs and health systems that, today, are not connected with each other. Net2Net Connect – Allows health systems and technology vendors that already support [...]

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A Dark Horse in ACO Formation: Large Physician Groups

Kudos to the AMGA (American Medical Group Association) for advancing the cause of physician-led accountable care organizations (ACOs)! A few days ago it “convened leadership teams from 22 leading medical groups and organized systems of care at the inaugural meeting of the AMGA ACO Development Collaborative”. In many communities, hospitals (delivery systems) will be the “natural” organization to lead [...]

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Hospital Readmissions Avoidance “Programs” — Vendors and Hospitals Not All On the Same Wavelength

Last week I attended and participated in an excellent conference — the National Reducing Hospital Readmissions Forum sponsored by World Research Group. One of my main take aways is to observe a simple — yet huge — difference in mindset between hospital executives and vendors. Over the past few months I’ve heard many vendors with diverse health care [...]

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The Achilles Heel of ACOs? Shared Savings Payment Model Unlikely to Motivate Hospitals

Sometimes you read something and the full impact doesn’t hit you until hours — perhaps days — later.  As I was out mountain biking today, the importance of something I ran across yesterday suddenly hit me. Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are today’s cure-du-jour for reforming the health care delivery system. Bob Berensen, MD of the Urban [...]

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Megatrend Spotting: Health Plan Role of Having “Best Data About YOUR Medical Conditions” is Up for Grabs

Who has the most comprehensive data about YOUR clinical conditions? For most people, the answer today is “your health plan”, but it’s not at all clear that health plans will continue to have this role in the future. As physicians and hospitals adopt EHRs, it’s foreseeable that clinical data about patients will be far more [...]

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Overview: Here Come Stages 2 and 3 of HITECH!

  We’ve spent the past year creating the MU (meaningful use) requirements for Stage 1 of the HITECH act.  As shown by the diagram above, Stage 1 focuses on Data Capture and Sharing. Now it’s time to begin to focus on Stage 2 (Advanced Clinical Processes) and Stage 3 (Improved Outcomes). The current generation of [...]

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