Community Wellness Centers of America, LLC’s (CWCOA) strategic partnership with OmniMD was formed as part of a pilot healthcare program to integrate Electronic Health Records (EHR) technology into the initiative for South East Queens as detailed in CWCOA’s 465 page report, submitted by Senator Huntley to Governor Cuomo, titled “Integration of a Cost Effective Plan for Jamaica/Queens.

This healthcare initiative’s purpose is to provide not only needed medical services to the community, but also provide employment for our residents. To begin this process, community residents will be trained in electronic health records (EHR) technologies creating employment opportunities in the field of internet healthcare which will address the disparities in Southeast Queens.

Unemployed community residents will be trained in the computer facility located within Rochdale Village and cover various disciplines in both internet technology and the use of EHR technologies with specific applications for clinics, physicians and residents which enables them to gain meaningful employment in this community.

Trained residents will be working with participating hospitals, medical schools, and academic institutions in preparation for an integrated healthcare program establishing the platform in building an accountable care organization (ACO) to better serve the community’s healthcare needs.

Dr. Robert Evans, CEO/President of CWCOA stated, we have secured the support from renowned healthcare institutions, specialty physician group practices and State supported services for mental illness and HIV/AIDS to provide easily accessible medical services for our community which includes walk-in clinics, cardiovascular and diabetes services. All of these services will undoubtedly provide various employment opportunities for residents interested in the field of medical services.

Dr. Evans also stated that he and Mr. Divan Da’ve / CEO of OmniMD have worked together on several successful projects including the Healthy Heart Project which was a cardiovascular screening held free of charge in Rochdale, November 2010, and attended by hundreds of residents,  legislators and stakeholders within the community.

CWCOA healthcare initiative will empower the community to fight disparities in healthcare which is supported by both State Senator Shirley Huntley’s office and members of the Rochdale Board of Directors; these members include Joe Evans, Gene Castro and Jeanne Hall

MISSION OBJECTIVES WITH HEALTHCARE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

CWCOA mission in developing a comprehensive approach and using healthcare information technologies is to identify the specific disparities, and tailor culturally competent clinical quality improvement initiatives that:

• Automate and standardize the collection of race/ethnicity and all relevant data;
• Enables us to prioritize the use of the data for identifying disparities and tailoring     improvement efforts for the treatment and educational programs required to address chronic illnesses and diseases;
• Focus our healthcare information technology efforts to address fragmented care  delivery for racial/ethnic minorities and provide in-home telemedicine services and access to personal healthcare records through secured access contained within OmniMD electronic health records (EHR) technology system; and
• Development of standard practice patterns of care integrated with hospitals and medical services in our community that will provide this healthcare program with increased data analytic capacity to better coordinate care and improve the timely deliverance of care which is fully interoperable with any healthcare information system our local hospitals have adopted.

About OmniMD™:

OmniMD™, Version 11.0 is an ONC-ATCB 2011-2012 certified EHR. OmniMD™, Version 11.0 is a CCHIT Certified® 2011 Ambulatory EHR with Five Star Usability Rating. OmniMD™ suite of Electronic Health Records (EHR) and Practice Management System (PMS) product and services offer unparalleled reliability, ease-of-use, efficiency, and customizability. The comprehensive feature set is customer-driven, innovative and continuously updated to keep pace with rapid changes in healthcare industry. The specialty-specific EHR covers over 30 medical specialties, and is fully customizable to suit individual needs and workflow settings. From EHR to practice management to electronic claims, OmniMD™ empowers healthcare organizations to effectively address their financial, administrative, clinical, and regulatory needs. OmniMD™ is division of Integrated Systems Management Inc.

Media Contact (OmniMD™)
pr@omnimd.com
(914) 332-5590 Ext 169

OmniMD™
303 South Broadway, Suite 101
Tarrytown, NY 10591
Ph: 914-332-5590 Ext. 169
Fax: 914-909-5280
www.omnimd.com
www.ismnet.com

Copyright © 2010. OmniMD™. All Rights Reserved.
OmniMD™ is a trademark of Integrated Systems Management Inc.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 5, 2011
Media Contact:
Ted Dave
pr@omnmd.com
tdave@omnimd.com

January 5, 2011 – Integrated Systems Management Inc announced today that OmniMD™ EHR, Version 11.0 is 2011/2012 compliant and was certified as a Complete EHR on January 4, 2011 by the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT®), an ONC-ATCB, in accordance with the applicable (eligible provider) certification criteria adopted by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The 2011/2012 criteria support the Stage 1 meaningful use measures required to qualify eligible providers and hospitals for funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

According to Divan Dave, CEO, of OmniMD™ “This certification is another step in our commitment to provide providers with intuitive, easy-to-use, affordable technologies that help them improve patient care, reduce their costs and qualify for government incentives”.

The ONC-ATCB 2011/2012 certification program tests and certifies that Complete EHRs meet all of the 2011/2012 criteria and EHR Modules meet one or more – but not all – of the criteria approved by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) for either eligible provider or hospital technology.

“CCHIT is pleased to be testing and certifying products so that companies are now able to offer these products to providers who wish to purchase and implement certified EHR technology and achieve meaningful use in time for the 2011-2012 incentives,” said Karen M. Bell, M.D., M.S.S., Chair, CCHIT.

OmniMD™ EHR, Version 11.0 certification number is CC-1112-484340-1. ONC-ATCB 2011/2012 certification conferred by CCHIT does not represent an endorsement of the certified EHR technology by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services nor does it guarantee the receipt of incentive payments.

The clinical quality measures to which OmniMD™ has been certified include:

NQF 0421 - Adult Weight Screening & Follow-Up
NQF 0013 - Hypertension: Blood Pressure Measurement
NQF 0028 - Tobacco Use Assessment and Cessation
NQF 0041 - Influenza Immunization
NQF 0024 - Weight Assessment and Counseling
NQF 0038 - Childhood Immunization Status
NQF 0034 - Colorectal Cancer Screening
NQF 0043 - Pneumonia Vaccination Status
NQF 0067 - CAD: Oral Antiplatelet Therapy
NQF 0084 - Heart Failure: Warfarin Therapy

OmniMD™ EHR Version 11.0 is also certified in CCHIT’s separate and independently developed certification program. OmniMD™ Version 11.0 is a pre-market CCHIT Certified® 2011, Ambulatory EHR. Integrated Systems Management Inc. has certified its EHR technology in both programs to provide greater assurance to its customers.

About Integrated Systems Management, Inc

Founded in 2000, OmniMD™ integrated Electronic Health Records and Practice Management (PMS) products and services, offers unparalleled reliability, ease-of-use, efficiency and customizability. OmniMD™ Ambulatory EHR has also earned a designation as a pre-market CCHIT 2011 Certification with the highest 5 Star Usability Rating ensuring OmniMD™ commitment to have a comprehensive, secure, scalable, intuitive and interoperable EHR system. OmniMD™ Ambulatory EHR Version 11.0 is CCHIT 2011 Pre-Market Certified, web-enabled and support devices ranging from Tablet PCs to Smart phones. OmniMD™ offers a comprehensive set of services such as Health Transcriptions, Document Management, Patient Portal, Patient Reminder and Eligibility Verification as part of an integrated solution under one roof helping practices to effectively addressing their financial, administrative, clinical, and regulatory needs. OmniMD™ Ambulatory EHR Version 11.0 is built as a true Software as a Service solution.  It can be deployed as an Enterprise or a Subscription based Service as per the practice requirements.  OmniMD™ is designed to exceed the present and future needs of the healthcare industry. OmniMD™ is robust, scalable, interoperable, secure, intuitive and customizable with rapid deployment model. OmniMD™ EHR has also achieved Surescripts® Gold Solution Provider status, which allows for interoperability with the nation’s community pharmacies - improving the safety, efficiency and quality of the prescribing process. Gold Solution Provider status is granted to vendors whose software products have surpassed Surescripts’ baseline product certification, by demonstrating a higher level of commitment to e-prescribing, enhanced security, excellent customer support and service. OmniMD™ is a division of Integrated Systems Management, Inc. – ISM Inc. - (www.ismnet.com) a leader in Software Development and Information Technology Consulting since 1989.

About CCHIT

The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT®) is an independent, 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with the public mission of accelerating the adoption of robust, interoperable health information technology.  The Commission has been certifying electronic health record technology since 2006 and is approved by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as an Authorized Testing and Certification Body (ONC-ATCB).  More information on CCHIT, CCHIT Certified® products and ONC-ATCB certified electronic health record technology is available at http://cchit.org.

About ONC-ATCB 2011/2012 certification

The ONC-ATCB 2011/2012 certification program tests and certifies that EHR technology is capable of meeting the 2011/2012 criteria approved by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). The certifications include Complete EHRs, which meet all of the 2011/2012 criteria for either eligible provider or hospital technology and EHR Modules, which meet one or more – but not all – of the criteria. ONC-ATCB certification aligns with Health Information Technology: Initial Set of Standards, Implementation Specifications, and Certification Criteria for Electronic Health Record Technology published in the Federal Register in July 2010 and strictly adheres to the test procedures published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) at the time of testing.   ONC-ATCB 2011/2012 certification conferred by the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT®) does not represent an endorsement of the certified EHR technology by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services nor does it guarantee the receipt of incentive payments.

“CCHIT®” and “CCHIT Certified®” are registered trademarks of the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology.

It was inevitable, given the short timeline and the apparent seat-of-the-pants nature of the rulemaking process, but CMS is preparing a guidance document intended to clarify several details and fix some inconsistencies in the final Stage 1 rule for meaningful use of EMR.

At last week’s meeting of the Health IT Policy Committee’s workgroup on meaningful use, Tony Trenkle, director of the CMS Office of e-Health Standards and Services, said the guidance will provide more detail on the objectives and measures in the rule and “should help clarify issues and help the [committee] plan for recommendations for future stages,” Government Health IT reports. The clarifications should be out “shortly,” Trenkle promised.

Meanwhile, the workgroup is looking ahead to Stage 2 of meaningful use, 2013-14, which will have higher thresholds of compliance than Stage 1, while trying not to deter hospitals and physicians from adopting EMRs. “We want to pay particular attention to smaller practices and hospitals,” workgroup chair Dr. Paul Tang said, according to Government Health IT. “We want to raise the tides but not sink the boats.”

For the next stage, the workgroup likely will attempt to find a happy medium between the initial standards for 2011-12 and the more rigorous requirements for Stage 3, which is set to begin in 2015. For example, Stage 1 requires physicians to write 30 percent of their prescriptions electronically and federal officials ultimately would like to see a 90 percent e-prescribing rate, so expect the Stage 2 standard to be 60 percent.

The Health IT Policy Committee would like to take some of the reporting burden off of providers, so Stage 2 probably will call for EMRs to have more standard and coded data for easier extraction. “”We hope that they are capturing the information as part of patient care and not a separate activity,” Tang said.

Expect the workgroup to have Stage 2 recommendations ready for public consumption by October, and to seek comments on its preliminary plan in December.

Source       :         http://www.fiercehealthit.com/story/cms-developing-meaningful-use-guidance-remove-contradictions/2010-09-27?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal

WASHINGTON – An alliance that claims more than 2,300 community-based hospitals as members is pressing Congress for a legislative fix to the final rule on meaningful use to ensure that every hospital receives its fair share of incentive payments under the HITECH Act.

After having tried in vain to have the issue addressed before the federal rule was final, the Premier healthcare alliance submitted its statement Tuesday to the House Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health at a hearing on meaningful use EHR. The panel chairman is Pete Stark (D-Calif.).

At issue: health systems with multiple inpatient facilities operating under one provider number.

The final meaningful use rule would allow only one Medicare incentive base payment per year for multiple inpatient facilities operating under the same Medicare provider number. By contrast, an identical health system whose inpatient facilities each operate under its own Medicare provider number would receive a base payment for each facility, Premier noted.

“This is a crucial issue for Premier alliance hospitals and could financially handicap co-located and multi-campus hospitals’ ability to implement EHRs in a timely manner,” the alliance wrote in its statement. “More than 50 Premier alliance hospital systems representing more than 100 inpatient facilities are affected by this methodological error by CMS, which will cost them millions of dollars in EHR incentive payments.”

“Despite receiving hundreds of comments on this specific issue in response to its proposed rule published on Jan.13, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) chose not to make any changes to its methodology for calculating a qualifying hospital’s Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive payment,” Premier said. “By not modifying its methodology, CMS creates an arbitrary and inequitable distinction between identical hospital systems based solely on whether a system has multiple inpatient facilities operating under a single Medicare provider number.”

The government released the final rule on meaningful use on July 13. Initial industry reaction was mostly positive, with kudos given to CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology for having dropped an all-or-nothing approach and provided greater flexibility in the rule.

Source  :  http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/alliance-calls-legislative-fix-meaningful-use

Tuesday at 10 am, CMS and ONC released the final rules that will guide electronic health record rollouts for the next 5 years.

Here’s my analysis of the key changes in the Final Rule:

1. HHS has adopted the HIT Policy Committee recommendation to frame Meaningful Use as core requirements and discretionary requirements. In so doing, they have reduced the total number of requirements and introduced choice.

In the NPRM there were 25 requirements for Eligible Professionals and 23 for hospitals.

In the Final Rule there are 15 core requirements for Eligible Professionals and 14 for hospitals.

There are 10 discretionary requirements from which 5 must be chosen.

2. Thresholds have been reduced in many cases. For example, CPOE had a threshold of 80% of orders for Eligible Professionals and 10% of orders for hospitals. The language in the final rule focuses on order entry of medications and requires that 30% of patients with medication orders to have at least 1 medication order entered electronically. This requirement applies to both Eligible Professionals and Hospitals.

3. Administrative Simplification has been postponed to Stage 2.

4. Decision Support rules changed from 5 to 1

5. Required Clinical quality measures have been reduced to 6 for professionals and 15 for hospitals. For professionals, there are 3 core measures required, 3 alternative core measures, and a choice of 3 from a pool of discretionary measures. Reporting by attestation is required in 2011, electronic reporting is required in 2012. Clinical quality measurements for specialists have been eliminated for stage 1. There has been great effort to align meaningful use with PQRI measures.

6. The NPRM did not include the recording of advanced directives or a provision for providing patients with educational materials. The final rule includes these as discretionary meaningful use requirements.

Overall this final rule maintains a balance between the policy objectives sought and the technology changes possible that are achievable now. There will still be 3 stages of meaningful use and later stages will be more demanding. All the original stage 1 requirements will still be part of meaningful use by stage 2.

In January of 2011, the clinicians may begin the 90 day process of using a certified record per meaningful use requirements. Attestation of this use begins in April 2011. CMS payments will begin May 2011.

ONC also released the final rule on Standards and Certification today. They have done a remarkable job adding detailed implementation guidance specificity for patient care summaries, public health laboratory reporting, syndromic surveillance, and immunizations. It’s a tricky balance to ensure there is enough specificity to test and certify EHRs and modules for interoperability while at the same time encouraging innovation. The final rule issued today achieves that balance perfectly, ensuring that only mature implementation guides are specified, leaving room for innovation in such as areas as how to transport data from point to point via NHIN Direct and other demonstration projects.

Overall, a very good day for ONC, HHS and stakeholders. The final rule means Meaningful Use will be achievable by many. The Standards and the process to certify their use are sufficiently specific. I’m impressed.

Source :- http://www.healthcareitnews.com/blog/meaningful-use-and-standards-are-finalized

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration announced $975 million in grants to help states, doctors and hospitals move from paper to computerized record-keeping.

Studies show electronic medical records help reduce medical errors and improve the quality of patient care. The grant money comes from the economic stimulus passed by Congress last year and is part of a push to get health care providers to adopt electronic record-keeping.

The White House says the awards will help make electronic record-keeping technologies available to more than 100,000 hospitals and primary care physicians by the year 2014 while helping train thousands of people for careers in health care and information technology.

The grants come from two federal agencies.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced $386 million in grants to advance electronic health records at the state level. Sebelius is also granting $375 million to 32 nonprofits for regional training of health care workers on these technologies.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis announced around $225 million to support 55 job-training programs in 30 states. The administration says around 15,000 people should get training in the health records technology field. Solis said the training will lead those people to jobs offering career-track employment and good pay and benefits.

Above article publish on http://www.startribune.com/business/84237597.html

Molly Merrill, Associate Editor

President Barack Obama called for fixing the broken healthcare system by building upon investments made in electronic medical records in a town hall meeting held last month.

The town hall was held at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Va., where the president took questions the public had submitted online regarding healthcare reform.

I know that people say the costs of fixing our problems are great and in some cases, they are, Obama said. The costs of inaction, of not doing anything, are even greater. They’re unacceptable. And that’s why this town hall and this debate that we’re having around healthcare is so important.

The president highlighted the continued use of electronic medical records as one way to help drive down costs.

We already made those investments in the Recovery Act because when everything is digitalized, all your records your privacy is protected, but all your records on a digital form that reduces medical errors. It means that nurses don’t have to read the scrawl of doctors when they are trying to figure out what treatments to apply. That saves lives; that saves money; and it will still ensure privacy, the president said.

Obama said the government has already identified $950 billion over 10 years that will be used to pay for healthcare reform. He said this doesn’t even include the savings that we’re going to get from prevention, or the savings that we’re going to get from health IT because in using congressional jargon, which I’m never supposed to do because nobody understands it, it’s not scorable.

And what that means is, is that the Congressional Budget Office can’t identify exactly how much you would save - even though everybody believes that it will end up saving a lot of money, we can’t put a hard number on it, Obama said.

The president ended his speech by calling for the American people to stand up and say now is the time.

We can create a healthcare system that gives you choice, allows you to keep your doctor, drives down costs, makes sure that every American doesn’t have to worry if they lose or change their jobs. That’s our aim. That’s our goal. We’re going to make it happen this year.

Above article published on

http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/obama-stresses-it-key-health-reform

By Gautham Nagesh

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will reimburse states that issue incentive payments to health care providers to encourage adoption of electronic medical records, according to guidance released on Sept. 1.

A letter from CMS Director Cindy Mann to state Medicaid directors details a program under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that offers financial incentives for eligible Medicare and Medicaid providers to adopt interoperable electronic health records. Approximately $20 billion will be distributed to providers by 2014, mostly in the form of grants.

The payments will help defray the costs of deploying electronic health record systems and can be used to pay for hardware, software, support services and training. But the grants will not necessarily cover the entire cost of installing such systems.

“The incentive payments are not direct reimbursement for such activities. Rather they are intended to serve as an incentive for eligible providers to adopt and meaningfully use certified EHR technology,” Mann said in her letter.

The funds can be used only for electronic health records technology that is certified and interoperable with state or federal administrative management systems.

“Therefore, states risk making unallowable incentive payments prior to receiving guidance on how to make these systems compatible,” Mann wrote.

States are immediately eligible to request 90 percent reimbursement for administrative costs associated with planning and issuing the payments. But that money comes with significant conditions attached. For administrative reimbursement, states must obtain prior approval from CMS for any planning activities or expenditures. They also must provide documentation demonstrating adequate oversight of their incentive programs.

Under the Recovery Act payments would be limited, based on average costs of setting up electronic health record systems, which have yet to be determined. Mann said the secretary of Health and Human Services will establish guidance on those limits.

CMS plans to issue a proposed rule by the end of the year that will contain more detailed information, and will work with states to determine when they are ready to begin issuing payments.

Above article published on

http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20090904_7905.php?oref=topnews

The Social Security Administration plans to make wider use of electronic medical records to process disability applications.

By Marianne Kolbasuk McGee

The Social Security Administration is planning to award $24 million in contracts to implement electronic medical records that would improve its disability program’s application process.

Under the agency’s new Medical Evidence Gathering and Analysis Through Health IT program, Social Security will electronically receive clinical information from healthcare providers treating patients who are seeking disability benefits. Currently, the bulk of the information the agency receives about applicants’ medical conditions is provided manually, using paper-based medical records and other documents.

Social Security has been testing the use of EMRs in the application process for about a year. In pilot programs with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and MedVirginia, a health information exchange in Virginia, the agency says it has significantly reduced processing time for those applications.

Now, Social Security is looking to expand that program. It wants to electronically collect disability applicants’ clinical information–with patients’ authorization–and apply a business rules engine to help it make benefits determinations, said Social Security officials at a webinar on Tuesday about the program.

During the current recession, the Social Security Administration says it has seen a significant increase in disability applications. Officials said they expect to receive more than 3.3 million applications in fiscal year 2010, a 27% increase over fiscal 2008. To process these applications, the agency sends more than 15 million requests for medical records to health care providers. EMRs will “vastly improve the efficiency of this process,” the agency said in a statement.

Under the new program, medical record data will be securely transmitted through the National Health Information Network, an initiative of the Dept. of Health and Human Services.

The new contracts are among health IT programs being funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. More details are available on the Social Security Administration’s Web site about its request for proposal, in which it’s seeking healthcare providers, provider networks, and health information exchanges to participate in the program.

Above article published on

http://www.informationweek.com/news/healthcare/EMR/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219200230

By Jim Dawson

Inside Science News Service

WASHINGTON (ISNS) –The progress and problems in developing a national system of electronic medical records topped the agenda Thursday as the Obama Administration’s “best and brightest” from the world of science, medicine and technology gathered in Washington for the inaugural meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

David Blumenthal, the national coordinator for health information technology, said there was an “appalling lack of use of technology” in the U.S. medical record-keeping system. “Only 20 percent of physicians and 10 percent of hospitals have meaningful electronic records,” he told the 21-member panel. The transition from the paper-based medical record-keeping system to an electronic one is a priority in President Barack Obama’s push for health care reform, Blumenthal said, as a way to save money over the long run and improve the quality of health care.

In February, Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which would put $20 billion toward what Blumenthal called a “completely revised, interoperable, integrated health information system.” The system, which is supposed to be functional by 2014, will actually be many different electronic records systems developed by private companies that meet a host of federal standards and requirements that are currently being developed.

“Paper records put us in a suboptimal position [to improve health care],” said Eric Lander, a co-chair of PCAST and the director of the Broad Institute, a medical genetics research program in Cambridge, Mass., run by both Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An electronic records system, in addition to allowing a patient’s medical records to be shared among doctors, could allow medical researchers to “mine data and combine data” to do faster, more sophisticated medical studies, he said.

Blumenthal said the point of the system isn’t the technology itself, but how that technology is used. “There is very little about the health care system that doesn’t concern us or that we can’t affect in some way,” he said. “We are enabling information to be more accurate and available at the point of care.”

“Use” is one of three area of concern for the scientists and others developing the records system. The other areas focus on getting doctors and hospitals to adopt the electronic system, and, once they have it, how to use it to efficiently exchange information.

The “adoption” issue addresses the difficult question of “which technology should be used, which [computer] platforms are mostly likely to support innovation and change,” Blumenthal told the committee. “And we have to realize that anything that is adopted now will be primitive by the time this entire system is put into place.”

The “exchange” issue involves a host of questions and problems, he said. Should the records system be centralized? How can the system make medical records easy to study and share among doctors, but at the same time guard the privacy of patients and make them secure? “Privacy and security must be assured,” Blumenthal said.

PCAST member Eric Schmidt, the Chairman of Google, in Mountain View, Calif., asked if patients would own their electronic medical records. Aneesh Chopra, the chief technology officer at the administration’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, replied that patients would be given summaries of their records. Schmidt shook his head and said, “that isn’t the same.”

In describing ways an electronic system could benefit medical research, Chopra noted that 40 percent of the U.S. population will at some point be diagnosed with cancer, “but today less than 5 percent of cancer patients have their information in a shareable form that is suitable for research. Why can’t every cancer patient be treated like someone in a clinical trial?” he asked. With electronic medical records, they could be, he said.

John Glaser, a doctor and advisor to the national coordinator for health information technology, detailed a list of benefits in patient treatment that would come from an electronic records system. The system would allow small hospitals and medical practices to have access to patient information on a more sophisticated, interconnected level, he said.

Patients typically see several doctors and they often assume the doctors are talking to each other. They usually aren’t, he said, but with the new records system they would be. Drug interactions would be more apparent, and treatments and procedures done by one doctor could create patterns that reveal a disease like diabetes to another physician working with the records.

The trick, Blumenthal said, is “structuring the [health] market to use the system and allow for innovation, but also maintain order. And we have to assure privacy and integrity in the system. If someone is talking to their doctor about STDs (sexually transmitted diseases), they want to know their records are secure,” he said.

He concluded by noting that while Denmark and other Scandinavian countries are far ahead of the U.S. in the use of electronic records, “nobody has developed an exchange system [of electronic medical records] in a country that is anything like the U.S. in size, population, cultural value differences, and economic structure.”

“We have to live in the world we have,” he said to the scientists and others working to establish the new system.

Above article published on

http://www.aip.org/isns/reports/2009/090807_pcast.html