For the Stark law to apply to allow hospitals to subsidize medical records for physicians, the software needs to be certified. Epic systems is probably best known for being the system used by Kaiser through out their networks of hospitals and clinics. Yesterday I had posted about PHRs also being on the listing of CCHIT to be certified, but with all the various areas of the web that touch a PHR, you are talking about quite a few vendors and devices, so that one remains a mystery as to perhaps which portions of a PHR can be certified. 
We have been reading quite a bit of late about Kaiser and their continued integration processes with other entities as well. BD
EpicCare Clinical Inpatient System, Version: Spring 2008, is the first inpatient electronic health records system to qualify under Chicago-based CCHIT’s 2008 criteria.
The company’s ASAP Emergency Department Information System, Version: Spring 2008, was one of three vendors that earned the commission’s first hospital emergency department EHR certification.
In addition, Epic won the first certification for an enterprise EHR that provides comprehensive ambulatory, inpatient and emergency department EHRs that are inoperable. The company received the designation for its EpicCare Enterprise Clinical System, Version: Spring 2008.
http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/EHRs_EMRs27278-1.html?CMP=OTC-RSS
Related Reading:
2008 versions only? So who has that installed? Not Kaiser nor Stanford nor PAML.
ReplyDeleteSo in Palo Alto home of Google Health you can't share records between Kaiser, Palo Alto Medical Group and now Stanford even though they all have Epic as their vendor.
How often do we have to hear from Hospitals (the vendors real stakeholders) there isn't a business case for integration when it is the consumers and employers that are paying for these systems?
A small investment would have huge pay off for patients and employers but break hospitals control of value chain.
Suggest AHIC2 and the new Obama administration step into this space and fund the interface engine. The last thing family practice doc's want is 3 versions of epic on their computers to allow them to see their patients records.
Anonymous to protect my job.
There is some real work in progress with Stanford and Kaiser, from a couple months ago, read here..
ReplyDeletehttp://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2008/08/kaiser-and-stanford-get-389m-to-study.html
The hospitals are integrating quite a bit, well those who can afford it are and they get some tax breaks for doing it with the Stark law too, and I have posted about many here recently, but with the way the economy is that certainly is not doing us any favors in that area either.
There are standards, called HL7 and CCR established where 2 very different systems can talk to each other too, and what is needed for that to occur is an integrator, and integrators are really what's making a lot of this happen, so it would not matter which version of Epic was installed, as long as the integrator included their specifications and set it up.
Here is one example of an integrator:
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2008/11/lakeland-regional-health-system.html
And one other related story:
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-electronic-records-reach-your.html
Also, there's the personal health record a consumer can use too, it will end up being a force in all of this too, I have mine going already as well.