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Search Results: "Medical Home"
A One in a Hundred Whitepaper: “Better to Best” Transcends PCMH, Care Coordination, Access, HIT, and ACO Payment Reform
Let me try to get you in the right frame of mind to read one of the most remarkable white papers in a long time: Better to BEST: Value Driving Elements of the Patient Centered Medical Home and Accountable Care Organizations — released yesterday by the Commonwealth Fund, Dartmouth Institute, and PCPCC.
Having been a debater in high school and then trained as a lawyer, my default mode of thinking is to be critical:
“Hey, Vince, how ya doin’? Great day isn’t […]
Getting DIRECTly to the Point: The Role of the Direct Project in Fast-Tracking Health IT Interoperability
By Rich Elmore and Arien Malec. Rich Elmore is the Direct Project Communication Workgroup leader and Vice President, Strategic Initiatives at Allscripts. Arien Malec is ONC’s Coordinator, Direct Project and Coordinator, S&I Framework.
A patient’s health records are no longer confined to a doctor’s office, shelved inside a dusty file cabinet. With the advent of the Nationwide Health Information Network, a framework of standards, services and policies that allow health practitioners to securely exchange health data, medical records digitized to be easily […]
Will ACO IT Models Be Walled Gardens or Open Platforms?
Will ACO (accountable care organization) IT models be walled gardens or open platforms? i.e., will ACO IT platforms focus on exchanging information within the provider network of the ACO, or will they also be able to exchange information with providers outside the ACO network? (If the question still isn’t clear, click here for a further explanation.).
“Does This ACO Thing Really Mean We Need to be ‘Accountable’”
The American College of Physicians (ACP) just released a well-reasoned and thorough position paper, The Patient-Centered Medical Home Neighbor: The Interface of the Patient-Centered Medical Home with Specialty/Subspecialty Practices.
As I’ve written before, the Big Idea behind ACOs (Accountable Care Organizations) is the notion of accountability, not the specifics of organizational structure.
The purpose of the ACP position paper is to address the gaps that exist in care coordination when a physician refers a patient to a specialist. The obvious and logical answer proposed is to develop […]
Care Coordination Metrics: One Can of Worms that NEEDS to be Opened
“Track who is on a care team — and share info with the patient.”
That’s just one of the summary recommendations coming from expert testimony given in a recent public hearing on how to improve care coordination through the use of health information technology. The Meaningful Use workgroup and Quality Measures workgroups are now wrestling with how to translate this recommendation into meaningful use criteria for HITECH Stages 2 and 3.
Seems like […]
The State-of-the-Art of Care Management Software: Disconnected
Care management software is intended to help patients make critical connections across the health care delivery system. Today it’s used primarily by 3rd party care managers who are typically either employed directed or indirectly by payers. While not surprising, the state-of-the-art of care management software is that it continues to function as disconnected islands of information.
The 2010 Health Information Technology Survey (available at no charge) provides an insightful yet sobering snapshot of care management software. The study was sponsored by TCS Healthcare Technologies, the […]
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 available and accessible.
Will patient data become:
A jockeying point for control and business advantage between health plans and care providers,
A collaborative opportunity to optimize clinical care and care […]
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 EMRs (electronic medical records) were designed primarily to assist care providers with clinical documentation, billing, and maximizing revenues. They were not designed to enable care coordination and […]
Is HITECH Working? #6: HITECH and Health Reform Objectives are Synergistic
by Vince Kuraitis JD, MBA and David C. Kibbe MD, MBA
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….or to be more specific, HITECH is synergistic with payment reform that could come from the recently passed national health care reform legislation — the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
We’ll keep this post fairly short and try to avoid many of the more divisive aspects of this topic. The need for healthcare payment reform is well understood on both sides of the aisle:
Realizing the full potential of health IT depends in […]
PCMH and Healthcare Reform: Avoiding Drowning in an Ocean of Opportunity
This article appears in the April 2010 issue of Medical Home News.
First, the good news: There are a lot of pilot and demonstration projects potentially involving the Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) in newly enacted Federal health care reform legislation – the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
Then, the bad news: There are a lot of pilot and demonstration projects potentially involving the PCMH in the PPACA.
…so many that the PCMH risks being drowned in an ocean of opportunity.
I’d […]