April 8th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Expert Interviews
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Marty Prahl is the lead contracted health IT architect at the Social Security Administration (SSA). His personal experiences have led him to become a passionate advocate for digital data sharing. Several years ago one of his uninsured relatives was diagnosed with a devastating disease. She applied for disability benefits through the SSA but the process took over a year for her approval. During that year her medical condition caused her to lose her job, and she had no means by which to pay her soaring medical bills. The bank repossessed her home, her husband left her, and she had to move in with Marty’s family. As they waited for her disability benefits to be approved, Marty tried to make payment on her bills, which put enormous financial stress on his family.
Living through this nightmare galvanized Marty into action – he decided to devote his IT career to speeding up and streamlining the disability determination process. Thanks to Marty’s work, and the many people who created the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN), the SSA is now participating in an electronic medical record and data sharing network. This means that transfer of the records required to make an individual disability determination (if everyone sending data to the SSA is part of NHIN) can occur in under a minute. If the information supports the disability claim, an approval could be made within 1-2 days.
Prior to becoming part of the NHIN network, the SSA had no choice but to receive information by fax and paper. In order to make a disability determination, all medical records (from all healthcare professionals involved in the patient’s are) had to be gathered and analyzed by hand. If a doctor’s office didn’t send in the patient’s medical record in a timely manner, then the process would halt. Of course, compensation for sending records to the SSA didn’t generally cover the cost of doing so for the doctor, so the financial incentive to get the documents in was low. It’s no surprise that this resulted in wait times of 3 months to 2 years.
But some people simply can’t afford to wait – disability determinations are the gateway to Medicare and Medicaid funding, and there are other programs available for those who don’t qualify for Medicare and Medicaid. But those programs cannot be accessed until an official disability determination is made by the SSA. There are approximately 3 million new disability claimants annually in the United States – and without electronic data sharing, those people will have to wait for the paper process to run its course.
However, early adopters like MedVirginia, in Richmond, VA are already members of NHIN and can easily share medical records with the SSA. If more hospital systems and providers joined the network, disabled patients would gain rapid access to much needed government insurance benefits, and hospitals would no longer be offering them potentially bankruptcy-inducing “charity care” while they wait for a determination from SSA.
So what should Americans do about this? Spread the word about NHIN, and ask your hospitals to join the network. The software is free and available online (the CONNECT “open-source” code is here). As for me, I guess I hope that if I’m ever in a terrible car accident I’ll be taken to a NHIN participating hospital. A couple of days seems like a much better wait time than 2 years for disability benefits. I think Marty would agree.
April 8th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Medblogger Shout Outs, News
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Tim Cromwell’s mother-in-law is 86 years old. Her husband is a Korean War veteran who developed Alzheimer’s disease, and receives care from both the VA and private healthcare providers. Because she and her husband take so many medications, they actually replaced their dining room table centerpiece with a collection of orange and white pill bottles. Mrs. Spencer keeps a hard copy of all of her husband’s medical records in a large file box that she carries with her on a cart with wheels. She has no alternative for keeping all her husband’s providers up to date with his complex care, and lifting and transporting the records has become more difficult for her in her eighth decade.
If this story sounds all too familiar, then you’ll be glad to know that the government is facilitating electronic medical and pharmacy records portability. One day it may be possible for Americans to dispose of those hard copy files, knowing that any provider anywhere can access their records as requested.
Tim Cromwell is passionate about alleviating his mother-in-law’s need to carry medical records around, and believes the way to do this is through the US Department of Veterans Affairs’ participation in the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN). Working in compliance with NHIN standards, the Federal Health Architecture group recently oversaw the creation of software (called CONNECT) that creates a seamless, secure and private interface with hospitals, and over 20 federal agencies’ medical records systems (including the Social Security Administration, Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Cancer Institute).
On April 6, 2009, NHIN released the CONNECT software necessary to make Electronic Medical Records systems interoperable. The software is “open-source” and free to all who’d like to incorporate it into their EMRs. Those who add the free software will be able to share data with NHIN’s member groups, which include early adopters like the Cleveland Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, Beth Israel Deaconness Medcial Center, and MedVirginia.
This means that if Mrs. Spencer and her husband receive their care from participating hospitals and federal programs, they’ll never have to tote paper records again. But it may take some nudging from patients and healthcare professionals like you to grow the network. If you’d like your hospital to participate in the NHIN network, encourage them to view the NHIN website here.
April 7th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Expert Interviews
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Network technology giant Cisco Systems, Inc. invited nurses to offer focus group feedback on a recent study that showed that 92% of nurses believe that communications lapses adversely affect patient safety. I joined five nurses in a cozy break out room at the HIMSS convention center and asked about their real-life experience with communications lapses in the hospital. Here are the highlights:
1. Technology Isn’t Perfect – although some hospitals have instituted bar code scanners and wireless computers to help to reduce errors, these devices often drop their connections. One nurse said that the devices actually slow down the process of distributing medications, and bypassing the system simply results in a loss of automated medication cross-checking. The devices don’t perform well in the case of an electrical surge, and nurses often waste time finding computers on wheels (affectionately known as “COWs”) that have a full battery.
2. Where’s The Patient? – the group of nurses all agreed that poor coordination of care inside the hospital can harm patients. Some nurses expressed frustration at having proceduralists and radiology teams remove the patients from their rooms without scheduling it with the nurses. They explained that nurses give out medications at specific times, and when the patients are taken to another part of the hospital without their knowledge, then they can’t plan to give them their medications appropriately. Missed doses or missed meals (for patients with diabetes for example) can result in dangerous hypoglycemic episodes, syncope, and various other harms.
3. Where’s The Pharmacist? – easy access to hospital pharmacists is critical for all clinical staff. One nurse relayed the shocking story of a med tech who was unable to get in touch with a hospital pharmacist to confirm I.V. zinc dosing in the NICU, and gave such an overdose that one of the premature babies died.
4. Where’s The Doctor? -during an audience poll at the Cisco booth, most nurses rated physicians as the hardest staff to get a hold of in the hospital setting. There is regular confusion about who’s on call, and there is often no direct line to call the physicians.
5. Where Are The Nurses Aides? – when it comes time to transfer patients (who are often very heavy) or move them in bed, nurses often have no way of finding peers to help them lift the patients safely. This results in wasted time searching for staff to assist, or even worse, can result in low back injury to the staff or patient falls.
6. Language Barriers – when patients are transitioned home from the hospital, they are often given complex instructions for self-care. These instructions are particularly hard to follow for patients whose native tongue is not English. Nurses see many re-admissions based on language-based miscommunications.
7. Decision Support Systems – one of the nurses suggested that a recent study showed that the number one source of clinical information for nurses was their peers. That means that nurses turn to other nurses for educational needs more often than they turn to a textbook or peer-reviewed source of information. Nurses would like to have better access to point-of-care decision support tools for their own educational benefit and the safety of patients.
8. Change of Shift – nurses identified shift changes as a primary source of communication errors. Technology that enables medication reconciliation is critical to safe continuation of inpatient treatment. One nurses said: “shift changes is when all the codes happen.”
And so I asked the nurses what their ideal technology would do for them to help address some of the communications problems that they’re currently having. This is what they’d like their technology to do:
1. All-In-One – nurses don’t want more devices to carry around. They want one simple device that can do everything.
2. Call a code – with one press of the button, the nurses would like the device to contact all staff who should participate in resusscitating a crashing patient.
3. Lab Values – nurses would like the device to alert them of all critical lab values on the patients under their care.
4. Clinical Prompts – nurses would like reminders of clinical tasks remaining for individual patients (e.g. check blood pressure on patient in bed 3)
5. Call and Locate Colleagues – the device should function as a full service cell phone with pre-programmed staff names/numbers and team paging lists
6. Locate Equipment -nurses would like to be able to track and locate wheelchairs, electronic blood pressure cuffs, and other equipment throughout the hospital.
7. Translate Verbal Orders To Written Orders – verbal orders are more prone to errors than written ones. An ideal device would have a voice recognition system in it that would translate physician orders to text.
Is there such a device on the market today? There are many different devices that have the capability to do some of above, but to my knowledge there is no device that can do it all yet. Companies like Cisco are working hard to provide integrated solutions for nurses – and the Nurse Connect phone is an important first step. What technologies would you recommend to nurses?
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More information about the phone (from press release):
Cisco Nurse Connect is a newly introduced solution that integrates nurse call applications, including Rauland-Borg’s Responder product lines, with Cisco Unified Wireless IP 7925G Phones to deliver nurse call alerts to mobile caregivers.
The Cisco 7925G Phone was specifically designed with the features necessary to support the unique safety and biohazard requirements of hospitals, including a battery that supports up to 13 hours of talk-time, ruggedized and hermetically sealed, and Bluetooth support for hands-free use.
The Nurse Connect Solution offers many benefits. For example, by reaching nurses on their mobile devices, the need to continually walk back to nursing stations or patient rooms is greatly reduced. Nurses can also have two-way communications with patients and send immediate requests to different levels of personnel after talking with the patient.
April 7th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Announcements, Expert Interviews, Health Policy, True Stories
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I had another exciting day at HIMSS today in Chicago. I interviewed a team of nurses about hospital communications lapses, met with the COO of Healthline, the CMIO of Elsevier, HHS’s National Coordinator, Dr. Rob Kolodner, and had dinner with Rich Carmona, the 17th Surgeon General of the United States. I have about 10 blog posts that I need to publish about all of the above – but just wanted to mention one of the funniest things that happened.
I nervously approached Dr. Rob Kolodner with my husband in tow today, wondering what interesting thing I could possibly say to the father of health IT interoperability (we had never met in person before). Just as I was searching for an interesting opening line, Dr. Kolodner says to me:
“Oh you’re Val Jones! I have your shirt!”
Of all the things Dr. Kolodner could have said to me, that was NOT what I was expecting. I smiled quizzically at him, trying desperately to figure out how he’d come to possess one of my shirts. My husband shot me a sideways glance. Fortunately for me, Rob didn’t leave me confused for more than a few (very long) seconds.
“You’re the cartoonist… I picked up one of your t-shirts at the Health 2.0 conference last year. It’s really funny.”
“Oh, I see…” I chortled. “You must have the one of the ER nurse who can’t read the doctor’s handwriting.”
“That’s the one!” said Kolodner, beaming. “I got one for my friend who’s an ER doc.”
And so I asked my husband to take the photo of us above.
My husband just shook his head… I think we met my first fan.
April 6th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Health Tips, Uncategorized
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I attended a teleconference meeting* with John Halamka yesterday at the Cisco booth at HIMSS. It was an exciting experience – and quite intimate since I was there with only 1 other reporter and two Cisco staff. The room was closed off from the exhibit hall but we could be viewed through glass and John’s face was about 4 feet tall in front of us. It actually felt a bit like a TV news room – with glowing lights, cameras, and mics everywhere.
I arrived a few minutes late because I was having trouble finding the booth with the McCormick numbering system – but Frances Dare graciously welcomed me, and John immediately responded (from the screen in front of us): “Oh, hello there new person!” It was most amusing.
I’m sure that John had said some brilliant things prior to my arrival – but I had the chance to ask him my very own questions for about 30 minutes. Here are some highlights:
Dr. Val: How are we going to get doctors in solo practice to get on board with a national EMR effort?
Dr. Halamka: What we’ve found in the Boston area is that even if you give solo-practitioners an entire online EMR system for free, they still don’t want to use it because it takes effort to learn how to do so. They’re just not willing to put in the time. However, now that there are financial incentives in place (the stimulus bill includes $44,000/doctor to adopt an EMR system), suddenly their willingness to comply has increased dramatically.
Dr. Val: How do they get the right EMR?
Dr. Halamka: Hospitals pay 85% of the development costs for a good EMR, and professional organizations pick up the other 15%. Then the EMR is licensed for free to the solo practitioners – they’re incentivized to adopt it, and all they see is an online browser. They don’t have to deal with the back end at all.
Dr. Val: Have you used voice recognition systems at your hospital?
Dr. Halamka: Yes. We’ve found that voice recognition systems don’t work well in the ER because it’s too noisy in there. Also, the nurses don’t like having to tote around another piece of electronic equipment to do their jobs. However, we love our voice recognition dictation system – I can call in my note and have it return to me to insert into the electronic chart in near-real time. That’s great. Of course, voice recognition works best for the narrative portion of a note in the medical record, it’s not so good for structured data.
Dr. Val: How are we going to get doctors on the same “practice page” so that patients receive consistent care for similar problems, no matter where they are in the country?
Dr. Halamka: We need to implement more physician decision support tools and create rule sets based on best practices/evidence. Some are already doing this successfully: Health Dialog uses nurses (via phone) to walk patients through treatment decision trees. UpToDate is a good resource for doctors. At our hospital we’ve even negotiated in advance with the local insurance plans to have them automatically approve radiology tests based on pre-determined rule sets. That saves the docs a lot of time because they don’t have to call for approval for every single radiology test that they order. If the test is indicated by the rules, then it’s automatically approved.
Dr. Val: Some doctors have had bad experiences with rule-based quality measures. One ER doc I know was reprimanded for doing the right thing (clinically) because it didn’t comply with a rule set. How do you address the inflexibility of rule sets in the face of complex human lives and situations?
Dr. Halamka: Quality measures must be based upon clinical data, NOT administrative or claims data. Administrative codes are too far removed from what’s actually happening clinically – so if we are going to automate quality scores, they have to be analyzing the right data sets. However, quality scoring is not perfect. My hospital actually got “dinged” for reporting too much. We’re very transparent at BIDMC and tried to supply all our quality measures to a local oversight body. Of course, the other hospitals weren’t reporting anything like the level of detail that we were, so we looked like an outlier – and a really bad hospital. Of course it was just an artifact. But it took some time to clear up.
Dr. Val: I once heard someone say that judging a hospital’s quality based on administrative data is like judging a restaurant’s quality by its grocery list.
Dr. Halamka: That’s a good one. I’ll have to use it. Well thanks for the call – I’m speaking to you here [points to the white curtains behind him on the screen] from my basement!
Dr. Val: Thanks for your time! I look forward to your HIMSS lecture tomorrow on what the stimulus bill means for IT.
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*TelePresence Fireside Chat – Sunday, April 5 (3-4pm CT) – Dr. John Halamka, CIO of CareGroup Health System will conduct a live interview via TelePresence, an immersive in-person meeting experience, from his home in Boston along with Frances Dare of Cisco, who will be onsite at HIMSS. The discussion will focus on a number of issues pertaining to the stimulus funding package. Additionally, Mrs. Dare and Dr. Halamka will discuss how technology such as healthcare telemedicine and remote video will play a role in not only time and cost savings but also helping serve rural populations.
Recent AP article about Cisco.
