05-23-12 | Blog Post
8:43 A.M. – Good morning from Indy!
Online Tech is at the Indiana HIMSS Medical Informatics Summit, Leveraging HIT for Healthcare Transformation, featuring national and local speakers addressing topics such as ACO payment reforms, clinical innovations, consumer engagement, medical homes and meaningful use.
The day is going to start with the welcome speech from Bernie Ulrich of the Indiana Hospital Association, and Dr. Alan Snell of Indiana HIMSS.
Kicking off speeches at 9:15 A.M. ET will be Dr. Stephanie Moore with the Center for Connected Health, Partners Healthcare who will be discussing “Getting from Here to There on Accountable Care.”
Following her speech, vendor booths will open for attendees.
Here’s the schedule for the rest of the day:
10:45 – “Enter Stage 2: Raising the Bar on Meaningful Use” – Monica Arrowsmith (I-HITECH REC)
11:15 – ” IT Security in the Era of Meaningful Use” – MacMcMillan (CEO CynergisTEK, Chair HIMSS Privacy/Security Policy Task Force)
12:45 – KEYNOTE – ‘Moving into a Medical Home” – Dr. Marjie Harbrecht (CEO Health Team Works)
2:15 – Consumer engagement panel – “Your Patients are Growing Impatient”
3:00 – “Achieving Stage 7 Adoption”- Todd Richardson (CIO Deaconess Health System)
3:45 – “Pulling it All Together” – Andrew Vanzee (HEalth IT Director, State of Indiana)
Stay tuned for more updates as the conference unfolds…
9:00 A.M. – Online Tech’s HIPAA Hosting booth:
11:36 A.M. – The conference started off well with updates on the Indiana HIMSS Chapter. Membership and events for the chapter continue to grow. Today’s event is the first in four years that is a full-day event, according to Dr. Snell. The chapter also boasts 800 members across the state with 300 of those members having attended the national HIMSS conference in Las Vegas. There is also a large rise of clinical professionals joining HIMSS.
Today’s proceeds from the conference will be divided between Indiana HIMSS and Indiana Hospital for scholarship funds to students in the Healthcare IT industry. Twelve students stood to be recognized during opening remarks. [Online Tech is offering two scholarships to students seeking post-secondary education in the Health IT, IT and Computer Sciences fields – learn more about it!].
The first presentation is, “Getting from Here to There on Accountable Care” by Dr. Stephanie Moore (Center for Connected Health, Partners Healthcare). We’re learning about how the Mass. General Hospital has begun to monitor the highest heart risk patients to prevent readmission.
One of the biggest factors for the program is engaging patients. We need to provide the right technology to monitor patients, and provide just in time teaching; not just explain what they can and can’t do while on a specific medication or care regimen. It’s important to establish and continue a relationship with the patient.
The second presentation is, “Enter Stage 2- Raising the Bar on Meaningful Use” with Monica Arrowsmith (I-HITECH REC). Monica Arrowsmith’s presentation spoke on the adoption and implementation of Stage 2 meaningful use, which should have a final rule out sometime this summer.
There is money available to eligible professionals and hospitals to incentivize adoption of meaningful use. Indiana has received $118 million towards AIU Attestation and meaningful use adoption. In order to receive the incentive, professionals and hospitals need to be able to show 90 days of meaningful use.
Monica pointed out that meaningful use didn’t exist two years ago, and we have taken huge steps to get to where we are today with meaningful use.
The collective purpose of meaningful use? Simple – to improve healthcare and reduce costs.
The goal is to get meaningful use to an individual level so that it brings home what meaningful use is capable of doing for patients. Through technology and adoption of meaningful use, we are beginning to catch individual’s health issues early enough to treat them before a major health issue; thanks to early reminders through technology. By having these technical interventions, they cut down on the number of clinical intervention, which gets to a potential problem sooner.
With Stage 2, integrity of data is key! Professionals must not be casual about what they enter into their EMR (electronic medical record) systems. They need to take into consideration everyone who will be involved in the care stream of a particular individual.
Patients will be engaging in electronic visits of their records more and more. This allows physicians to manage patient issues before they even set foot in a clinic.
The third presentation will be “Healthcare IT Security in the Era of Meaningful Use” by Man McMillian (CEO CynergisTEK,Chair HIMSS Privacy/ Security Policy Task Force) – Update forthcoming!
2:00 P.M. – The third presentation is “Healthcare IT Security in the Era of Meaningful Use” by Mac McMillian (CEO CynergisTEK,Chair HIMSS Privacy/ Security Policy Task Force).
To open the presentation, Mac McMillian asked a few questions:
Why is data security important? Do you trust your physician? Do you trust healthcare organizations?
When asked the previous questions, a majority of people say they trust their physicians. However, less than 20% trust large healthcare organizations. The reason behind this? Frankly, large organizatons haven’t taken the best care of PHI (protected health information).
In relation to data security, McMillian made the point that an individual’s credit card information sells for $1.50 on the black market, while someone’s health record sells for $50. Most people think that the loss of data occurs due to hackers gaining access to an organization’s system. In actuality, less than 70% of data breaches occur due to hackers. The majority of information that is stolen is through physical theft, and most frequently with the theft of personal laptops, cell phones, backup tapes, etc.
Knowing where your PHI is stored is key. While covered entities have all of the PHI data, business associates may also hold a significant amount of that PHI data. When dealing with the security of PHI data, not only is protecting it for security reasons key, but at this day in age, the safety of the patient is at stake as well. [Read Five Questions to Ask Your HIPAA Hosting Provider for ways to vet your business associates and keep your PHI secure.]
McMillian spoke of a recent conference he attended in which the presenter brought out a see-through test dummy that showed all of its internal organs onto the stage. The presenter then set up the situation: The dummy was a patient who had a device hooked up to their liver that delivered prescribed insulin injections. The presenter demonstrated that he was able to hack into the hospitals’ systems, access the patient’s data, and then injected a lethal dose of insulin. Security is key, yes, but patient safety is becoming a concern as well.
McMillian went on to discuss audits and the policies and procedures that need to be in place in order for an organization to meet compliance. If your organization suffers from a data breach, HHS gives you 5 days’ notice before they show up and request to review your documentation. If you don’t have documentation of your policies and procedures, that becomes an issue. Organizations need to not only have policies in place, but they also need to be able to demonstrate those policies. The demonstration is often the area most taken for granted.
Audits came up in the latter half of the presentation and discussed that early audits would simply tell you whether you were or weren’t compliant. They didn’t go into great detail as to what areas needed to be fixed to become fully compliant. Which brought up one of the key lessons learned: the gap between an organization’s polices and documentation needs to close significantly.
4:00 P.M. – The conference wrapped up with a final presentation by the Deaconess Health System CIO, Todd Richardson on “Achieving Stage 7 Adoption.”
The journey to achieving HIMSS Stage 7 is a very detailed road, but at the end of the day, it is all about the data and the improvements around the data.
Achieving Stage 7 is not necessarily an inexpensive undertaking, but the monetary savings can be huge for an organization down the road. Deaconess Health Systems saved around $9 million annually when moving to Stage 7. At the end of the day, it’s a value proposition -spend a little up front to save a lot later on.
In order to go get through Stage 7, there is a 13 page checklist that the hospital or organization must complete. Following completion of the checklist, there is a call to review the entire checklist. From there, the hospital schedules a visit with the inspectors. Assuming all goes well, you receive recognition at the annual HIMSS conference.
Deaconess received positive reactions from the inspectors when they noted that they were proactive in learning about the adoption process, encourage a team collaborative environment, and had a dashboard and scorecards that went out to all areas of the organization. Monitoring and documenting effectiveness of adoption across the organization was key in achieving Stage 7.
