David Blumenthal, MD, the national coordinator for healthcare IT, has called the federal allotment of stimulus funding to advance healthcare IT adoption “an unprecedented opportunity.” There are so many major healthcare IT-related policy events in the queue for 2010, it could make a CIO’s head spin.
An unprecedented opportunity is probably one of best ways to look at 2010, without going crazy.
First, there’s the quest for the elusive meaningful use of healthcare data. The new definition is slated to be released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services before this issue of Healthcare IT News goes to print. Doctors, hospitals and other providers will be scrambling to get their ducks in order to qualify for the 2011 incentives.
This will be no small feat, as many experts have pointed out. HIT adoption is low, and some surveys have shown that doctors are still skeptical about the value of bonuses they could receive for healthcare IT adoption and its meaningful use.
At a recent National Committee for Quality Assurance conference in Washington, D.C., Amanda Parsons, director of the New York City-based Medical Quality for the Primary Care Information Project, said doctors are “underschooled” on meaningful use and “utterly confused” about what to do to prepare for it.
According to Blumenthal, the government is hoping to remedy that with a host of grant projects designed to help confused providers. Very shortly, the ONC will announce the first 30 regional extension center grant recipients. These will be nationwide help centers on healthcare IT adoption. Community colleges will also be scooping up federal funding to help drive the training of much needed healthcare IT workers.
If meaningful use isn’t enough to keep a provider busy in 2010, there’s always the ICD-10 conversion to work on. It’s not required until 2013, but experts say it will take a tremendous effort teaching doctors how to document correctly and learning the currently overwhelming intricacies of the new system.
Recovery Audit Contractors will be out and about beginning in the summer of 2010, looking for Medicare billing errors, say CMS officials.
If this all sounds a bit challenging, you can take comfort that Blumenthal thinks you can do it. He has faith in the medical profession for its capacity to change. The culture of healthcare can be changed to include electronic health records, he said at the NCQA conference. “Over time, with persistence and with the help of the professions themselves,” change can happen, he said.
Blumenthal isn’t speaking without experience. He said he wasn’t the first to line up for conversion to EHRs, but after using them, he recognized the potential for better care.
