Federal legislation promoting Health Data Banks, sponsored by Rep Moore, Dennis

Perhaps the government would submit contracts to Microsoft, ie. HealthVault.
Does anyone have any updates? SV


H.R.2991
Title: To improve the availability of health information and the provision of health care by encouraging the creation, use, and maintenance of lifetime electronic health records of individuals in independent health record trusts and by providing a secure and privacy-protected framework in which such records are made available only by the affirmative consent of such individuals and are used to build a nationwide health information technology infrastructure.


SUMMARY AS OF:
7/11/2007--Introduced.

Independent Health Record Trust Act of 2007 - Directs the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to prescribe standards for the establishment, certification, operation, and interoperability of independent health record trusts (IHRTs).

Establishes a fiduciary duty requiring an IHRT to act for the benefit and interest of participants and of the IHRT as a whole. Sets forth penalties for any knowing or reckless breach of such duty.

Sets forth permitted uses for an electronic health record, including: (1) a primary use for purposes of the individual's self-care or care by health care professionals; and (2) a secondary use for purposes of public health research or related activities.

Directs that participation in an IHRT, or authorizing access to information from such trust, is voluntary. Prohibits any person from requiring that an individual participate in, or authorize access to information from, an IHRT.

Authorizes an IHRT to generate revenue to pay for operations through: (1) charging participants account fees; (2) charging authorized IHRT data users for accessing electronic health records; (3) the sale of information; and (4) any other activity determined appropriate by the FTC. Prohibits an IHRT from charging a fee for the transmittal of information from a health care provider to be included in an independent electronic health record.

Requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to establish an Interagency Steering Committee to coordinate the implementation of this Act. Requires the National Committee for Vital and Health Statistics to serve as an advisory committee for IHRTs.

Microsoft to Acquire Innovative Healthcare Technology and Assets From Global Care Solutions

PHR + Hospital EHR + Outpatient EHR = complete solution

HealthVault + Global Care Solutions + ? = Microsoft Health Solutions

Which EHR do you think is up for grabs? SV

Collaborative alliance with Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok will help bring enterprise-class health information system solutions to market around the world.

BANGKOK, Thailand — Oct. 29, 2007 — Building on a worldwide commitment to improving health through software technology, Microsoft Corp. has agreed to acquire software, intellectual property and other assets from Global Care Solutions (GCS), a privately held company based in Bangkok, Thailand, that develops enterprise-class health information systems. The acquisition complements Microsoft’s already strong portfolio of health solutions and will provide hospitals across international markets with a new alternative to achieve improved workflow and patient safety through information technology. GCS employees will join Microsoft’s Health Solutions Group, which will manage product development and delivery. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Global Care Solutions

eClinicalWorks Becomes Part of Hudson Valley Health Information Exchange and will be offered to almost 5000 physicians

Congratulations. SV

WESTBOROUGH, Mass. & FISHKILL, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--eClinicalWorks™, a market leader in unified EMR/PM systems, today announced that the company’s unified electronic medical record (EMR) and practice management (PM) system is available to physician practices involved in the Hudson Valley Health Information Exchange (HVHIE). eClinicalWorks is collaborating with the Taconic Health Information Network and Community Regional Health Information Organization (THINC RHIO) on this initiative.

biz.yahoo

GHI HIP NYCDOHMH Seminar on applying for EHR funding

The Tuesday November 9th, 2007 deadline for receiving city funds for an EHR is fast approaching. SV

Find out how you may receive city funds to improve administrative efficiences and reduce the day-to-day cost of running your practice with an Electronic Health Records system.

Featured Speakers

Mat Kendall, Director of Operations, PCIP NYCDOH
Sidd Shah, Project Director eClinicalWorks
Dr Aron Ron, Chief Medical Officer
Dr Salvatore Volpe, practicing physician, Health information Technology spokesman

Date
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
6-8:30 PM, Buffet Dinner provided

6:00-6:45: Registration and buffet dinner

6:45-7:00: Introduction and opening remarks (Dr. Aron Ron, Chief Medical Officer)

7:00-715: NYCDOH PCIP Program overview (Mat Kendall)

7:15-7:30: Physician eCW user experience (Dr. Sal Volpe)

7:30-8:15: eCW Demo (Sidd Shah)

8:15-8:30: Questions

Location

HIP Health Plan of New York
55 Water Street, third floor
NY NY 10041

Call 1.866.447.9717, option 5 to register or

email providercomm@hipusa.com or

Click on "Conference brochure" and fax completed registration form to 1-877-849-1993

NYS HEAL GRANT 5 Category 3 Questions and Answers

If like me, you lack a legal degree, here are two links to questions and answers for the HEAL grant.

Remember you only have until November 19, 2007. SV


Question and Answers #1

Questions and Answers #2

Westchester County Medical Society Medical Trade Show, November 1, 2007

Among the topics to be discussed:

Professional liability cases

Practice Management updates

Health Information Technology:Patient Safety, Quality Improvement, Income Enhancement

Coding

Location

Marriott Hotel
670 White plains Road
Tarrytown, NY 10591

Westchester County Medical Society

Misys Connect healthcare solution has gone "open source"

Going open source opens up the product to many creative minds and may expedite the acceptance of standards by others. SV

In a ground breaking move today (24 October 2007), Misys plc, the global application software and services company, took the lead in innovation by announcing that it will make the Misys Connect healthcare solution available to the open source development community. Working with open source developers is a pioneering first step towards establishing open standards in healthcare, which will benefit all Americans. Misys Open Source Solutions, a division of Misys plc, was established to create and drive innovation in the marketplace, using open source to move toward open standards is a great step forward.

Misys

NYC HEAL 5 Grant Category III: Pilot Implementations of Community-wide Interoperable EHRs

If you or a peer practice in NYC, this can be an excellent opportunity.
Please share this with information with others. SV

Background
The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH)’s Primary Care Information Project (PCIP) is dedicated to improving the quality, safety, and efficiency of health care for Medicaid recipients and other underserved populations in New York City through the adoption and use of electronic health records (EHRs).

As part of a Mayoral initiative, the DOHMH has received $30 million from New York City, to support over 1,300 primary care providers to adopt an EHR that is designed to foster community health. To be eligible to participate in this element of the project, a provider must either practice in a District Public Health Office (DPHO) area, or care for a population where at least 30% of their patients are on Medicaid/Child health plus or are uninsured. These eligible providers will receive assistance that will allow them to implement the Take Care New York (TCNY) version of eClinicalWorks (eCW) EHR that contains special functionalities developed by the DOHMH that are designed to assist providers to deliver high quality preventative health care.

The DOHMH has secured additional external support to enhance the project and expand its eligibility criteria. It received a $3.2 million HEAL I, that will allow 29 NYC Community Health Centers (CHCs), comprised of 648 providers at more than 150 locations, to adopt an interoperable EHR system with public health functionality. It has received a $3 million Center of Excellence grant in public health informatics that it is using to research the optimal ways that EHRs can be used to support public health goals, such as improved population health. Finally, it has received a grant from the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ) to evaluate the project and disseminate its findings nationally.

HEAL V Goal
To assist over 650 primary care providers operating in the NYC community, who currently aren’t eligible for the mayoral funded program, to adopt an EHR that will allow them to improve the quality of care they deliver to their entire patient population.

Plan of Action
In HEAL NY Phase 5, DOHMH will serve as the lead applicant, or CHITA, to contract with New York State. This proposal will specifically extend the EHR to 665 providers, who aren’t eligible for the mayoral support project (i.e., do not care for a population where at least 30% of patients are on Medicaid/Child health plus or are uninsured), but who serve Medicaid beneficiaries and are interested in adopting a public health focused EHR including. Specialists would fall to hospitals or pay their own way. Non-eligible providers include:
a) Physician practices and ambulatory care clinicians in solo and small physician offices;
b) General hospital(s) with clinical affiliation to CHITA clinicians
c) Diagnostic and treatment centers and facilities
All providers participating in the project will receive the TCNY eCW EHR system that will contain decision support tools such as point-of-care reminders that incorporate clinical guidelines and specific public health indicators developed by the DOHMH and interfaces with DOHMH information systems such as the Citywide Immunization Registry. Using its existing contract, DOHMH will propose to use HEAL NY funds to purchase the licenses, implementation and support services, necessary to assist primary care providers to adopt the TCNY eCW EHR system, which is valued at approximately $12,000 per provider full time equivalent (FTE). Each provider FTE, however, will be expected to contribute $4,000 to a shared technical assistance pool and document at least $8,000 in in-kind contributions, which can include the purchase of new information technology hardware and lost productivity due to training and go-live scheduling.

Providers that are interested in participating in the project must complete an application (attached), a HEAL NY letter of intent and financial commitment form and return it to DOHMH by Friday November 9th, 2007. Completed documents should be sent via fax to (212) 788-3240 and via email to pcip@health.nyc.gov. Questions should be sent to Mat Kendall, PCIP Director of Operations mkendall@health.nyc.gov or Reena Samantaray, PCIP Outreach Coordinator rsamanta@health.nyc.gov (212) 341-2263

Charleston Retirement community and St Agnes hospital to forge HIT link

Retirement communities and nursing homes are often left out of HIE (health information exchange discussions). This is a wonderful example of two institutions with two different HIT systems bridging the void. Bravo. SV

BALTIMORE, MD – A recent collaborative project between Erickson Retirement Communities and St. Agnes Hospital established instant patient data exchange between their respective Electronic Medical Records (EMR) systems, marking the first time in the United States that such as system has been developed between a hospital and a continuing care retirement provider. The health information exchange (HIE) system demonstrates the feasibility of efficient and secure healthcare data interchange while proving the value of technology in health settings.

The HIE allows residents from Charlestown Retirement Community, a campus developed and managed by Erickson, to be referred to St. Agnes Hospital for inpatient services as well as emergency care with their medical records electronically shared between the two institutions. The solution facilitates the exchange of information such as patient demographics, allergies, medications, discharge summaries and clinical summaries. It allows for both viewing as well as importing of standards-based clinical documents between the Meditech clinical information system at St. Agnes Hospital and the GE Centricity electronic medical system used by Erickson Health, the nation’s largest health and wellness system for older adults.

Erickson

New ACP PIER Point-of-Care CME Program

Here is another option for those of you who would like to get credit for looking up a medical topic while treating a patient.
Skyscape offers a similar service for a fee. SV

ACP Members can now earn 10 free AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™ by using the new PIER Point-of-Care CME tool. You can access this tool by clicking on the "CME Diary" link in the upper right corner of any PIER page.

This CME program enables you to record your clinical questions in a "diary" and document the location of the answers to these questions in PIER. Before submitting your questions for credit, the PIER Point-of-Care CME tool also requests that you complete an evaluation form.

Each question you answer is worth 0.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. Once you have completed 4 questions, you may submit them to earn 2 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. All entries must be submitted in sets of 4 questions.

After using your 10 free credits, you have the option of purchasing another 10 credits. Please note that AMA rules limit you to earning 20 credits per year through the PIER Point-of-Care CME program.


ACP PIER

Skyscape

Quest Diagnostics and NEPSI
QUEST joins National ePrescribing Patient Safety Initiative

October is the month of collaborations: NEPSI, eHealthVault. SV


eRx NOW TM Functionality Expanded to Include Quest Diagnostics Care360™ Physician
Portal Lab Order and Results Capabilities

The collaboration between Quest Diagnostics and Allscripts adds significant new capabilities to the NEPSI solution. Quest Diagnostics will provide physician users of eRx NOW with access to the electronic laboratory order and results module within its Care360 Physician Portal at no charge. Now, in addition to ePrescribing, through a single sign-on , eRx NOW subscribers will be able to see how many lab results are pending and will be able to click through to the Care360 Physician Portal to order lab tests and view, flow, and graph laboratory results, as well as run analyses on their patient population. This integrated access is expected to be available later this year.

NEPSI

Allscripts and HealthVault PHR


Allscripts is on board as well as NextGen.
Microsoft seems to have overcome the inertia that has delayed interoperablity between EHRs. If they can transfer information with HealthVault can direct communication be far behind? SV

Allscripts (Nasdaq: MDRX), the leading provider of clinical software, connectivity and information solutions that physicians use to improve healthcare, was featured in today’s launch of Microsoft HealthVault at a Washington, DC press conference announcing the new consumer health platform. Allscripts is the first market-leading Electronic Health Record company to offer its products on the HealthVault platform, providing physicians a means of sharing health information over the Internet with their patients.

During the press conference, Allscripts revealed its first product to connect to HealthVault – eRx NOW™, the web-based electronic prescribing solution offered at no cost to physicians across America as a key part of the National ePrescribing Patient Safety Initiative™, (NEPSI™), a coalition of the nation's leading technology and healthcare organizations, including Allscripts and Microsoft.


Allscripts

HHS Awards Contracts for Trial Implementations of the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN)

Let's hear it for NY! Some good news this week. SV

Awardees include the following organizations, representing broad-based state and regional health information exchanges:

CareSpark -- Tricities region of Eastern Tennessee and Southwestern Virginia
Delaware Health Information Network -- Delaware
Indiana University -- Indianapolis metroplex
Long Beach Network for Health -- Long Beach and Los Angeles, California
Lovelace Clinic Foundation -- New Mexico
MedVirginia -- Central Virginia
New York eHealth Collaborative -- New York
North Carolina Healthcare Information and Communications Alliance, Inc. -- North Carolina
West Virginia Health Information Network -- West Virginia


HHS.GOV

NYehealth

NextGen and Microsoft HealthVault

NextGen's ChartMail to become interoperable with Microsoft's HealthVault.
First EHR so far.
Let us know of any other EHRs that you may be aware of joining the HealthVault community. SV

NextGen

Adam Bosworth, has left Google Health

Marrissa Mayer has taken over the the health team until a permanent replacement is named.
According to his blog he has taken up some code writing again.
I look forward to see where it takes him. SV

Adam Bosworth

Microsoft PHR: Healthvault (beta) has arrived!

I am surprised that they "beat" Google on this one.
Perhaps they are waiting to see the public's response to a non-physician/medical society/managed care based service?

Microsoft has already lined up some impressive partners:

American Heart Association
American Stroke Association
CapMed
Kryptiq

Johnson and Johnson (glucometers)
Microlife (blood pressure monitors)
Omron (blood pressure monitors)
Polar (heart rate monitors)
and others.

I didn't see CCHIT or HL7 listed, nor EHR vendors. SV

Healthvault

Medication Reconciliation Solution from RelayHealth Helps to Address Patient Safety in Emergency Rooms Across the Nation

I look forward to learning more details, ie. integration with RxHub and Surescripts Databases as well as EMRs. SV

IntegrateRx™ - Medication History offers patient’s prescription history to help hospital efficiency and prevent harmful drug interaction

Atlanta, GA, Aug 13, 2007 — RelayHealth, the leader in connective healthcare solutions, today announced an electronic medication reconciliation solution designed to increase efficiency and eliminate blind encounters in hospital emergency rooms. Designed to create a HIPAA-compliant, nationwide patient safety initiative, IntegrateRx™ - Medication History provides healthcare organizations with a record of a patient's medications based on information extracted from insurance claims and/or prescription records. The solution is made possible through the participation of leading national pharmacies, pharmacy system vendors, hospital medication reconciliation vendors and the power of RelayHealth's intelligent pharmacy claims processing network, which processes prescription claims for more than 70% of the nation's pharmacies.

RelayHealth

Illinois hospital receives grant to create network for rural facilities

Salem Township Hospital will play a key role in an effort to improve health care in rural areas of the state and nation. The hospital has been awarded a $1.6 million grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to help create a network that will allow medical facilities in three southern Illinois counties to confidentially share patient information electronically. The Salem facility will act as a pilot for rural facilities in both the state and the country. Salem will partner with three other area hospitals in this endeavor.

Salem-Times Commoner

IBM uses 3D imaging to visualise patient records

Takes "graphical" user interface to a whole new level. SV

Researchers at IBM have developed new visualisation software that will allow doctors to view personal medical records on an animated human body.

Developed at IBM’s Zurich Research Lab, the Anatomic and Symbolic Mapper Engine (ASME) uses an avatar – a 3D representation of the human body – to allow doctors to see where a patient has injuries from their medical records.

Using the software, doctors can click on a particular part of the illustrated body and retrieve medical records with relevant information about any problems in this particular part.

e-Health Europe

SureScripts Launches Prescriber Vendor Advisory Council

Increased use of "true" e-Prescribing should help reduce costs.
The savings could then be shared by patients and health care providers alike. SV

Alexandria, VA – September 24, 2007 – SureScripts today announced the formation of the Prescriber Vendor Advisory Council, a group of 10 executives representing vendors of third-party electronic prescribing and electronic health record software from across the U.S. The council will advise SureScripts on programs designed to increase the adoption and use of electronic prescribing by physicians in the U.S.

Members of the council are experts in the design and application of information technology used by physicians and practice staff:



Allscripts – David Pearah, vice president of product management and operations;
DrFirst – Cameron Deemer, president;
eClinicalWorks – Dr. Raj Dharampuriya, chief medical officer;
e-MDs – Chuck Frederick, RPh, vice president of medical informatics;
MedPlus – Edward Bayliss, vice president, Care360 professional services;
RelayHealth – Ken Tarkoff, vice president and general manager;
NextGen – Steven Saitsky, vice president, partnership executive;
RxNT – Mark Wiggins, chief operating officer;
Wellogic – Sumit Nagpal, president and CEO;
Zix – Curtiss Hurst, partner services manager.

As part of its mission, the Council will provide insight on key variables that are known to impact a physician’s decision to begin e-prescribing and their level of satisfaction once they start:

Technology Design – Council members will review and provide feedback on the results of ongoing research and analysis by SureScripts that examines how changes in electronic prescribing technology and making fuller use of pharmacy interoperability can improve the minute-by-minute practice of medicine – in industry parlance, the “workflow” – by professionals in the physicians office and behind the pharmacy counter.
Education and Support – Council members will assist SureScripts in the rollout of its ongoing educational efforts to all physicians. These efforts are designed to provide physicians and their staff with information and resources that help them anticipate and address some of the challenges associated with implementing e-prescribing technology and the impact that can have on how a physician’s office manages all aspects of patient medications.
Conversion – Participating vendors will engage in outreach programs to their own customers who are among the estimated 150,000 physicians that use electronic medical record (EMR) or e-prescribing software to send new prescriptions and receive refill requests by fax – instead of electronically. Most of these physicians are unaware that their computer is only sending faxes to pharmacies. Many do not know that they have software that has been certified for an NCPDP-compliant electronic connection to the Pharmacy Health Information Exchange™, operated by SureScripts.

SureScripts