The voice for the healthcare IT reseller community.

Some of you might be wondering what’s going on at the helm of the President’s effort to bring all Americans interoperable electronic health records by 2014.  Close to the helm of this massive federal initiative is the American Health Information Community, or AHIC for short.  AHIC is a high level advisory panel with representatives from government, vendors, providers, employers and consumer groups.  They are leading the effort which will impact your lives and businesses through the rest of the decade.

Because of the miracle of technology, you can actually watch their meetings live via videocast, or if you like, view it later via from the National Institute of Health video archive – all for free.

At the June AHIC meeting, Health and Human Services Secretary Leavitt emphasized his sense of urgency to advance this agenda during his remaining 952 days in office.  He provided  a summary of the three broad goals for these remaining days:

·  To achieve price transparency in healthcare

·  To achieve quality transparency in healthcare

·  To implement Pay for performance reimbursement

Quality and price transparency will enable both pay for performance reimbursement, and theoretically, consumer empowerment to help consumers select the best, most cost-effective healthcare.  I buy the pay for performance component, but as a recent study of New York State’s hospital quality reporting program, a national model for quality transparency, casts doubt on the notion that any of this will lead to consumer empowerment.  A recent study in Health Affairs found that lower quality hospitals did not lose market share, that is, consumer behavior was not measurably affected by transparent quality. 

So far, AHIC defined a process for creating standards and approved its first batch of them.  Of particular interest to software resellers, AHIC created CCHIT (see March 2006 Invest MED, What Resellers Should Know about EHR Certification) which has published standards for ambulatory EHR software and certified its first 20 vendors.  If you’re selling one of these solutions, this can only be a good thing.  If your solution isn’t on this list, now would be a good time to get on the phone with your vendor and ask them what their plans are regarding certification.  (The first year price for certification is $28,000.)  From the Eagle’s nest, EHR certification seems to be a good idea.  If certification gains traction with buyers, we will see a shake-out/consolidation in the EHR market.  A reduction in the mind-numbing array of EHR choices facing both resellers and physicians will be a good thing. 

What’s next on the agenda?  During the next 952 days, Secretary Leavitt hopes to tackle standards for in-patient EHR and standards for regional and national health information architecture.

While they are breaking new ground, they will be doing their best to rally doctors to embrace the newly certified EHR vendors so that physicians accelerate their purchase of EHR software.  One tangible step is to amend the Stark laws so that hospitals can subsidize purchase of these systems – for certified vendors only.  They will also engage AHIC members (like the American Academy of Family Physicians) and other associations to promote these recommendations to their members. 

So where are the physicians on these AHIC’s agenda?  I haven’t heard too many concerns about certification.  One area of anxiety that is repeatedly expressed, however, is the fairness of as of yet undefined pay-for-performance reimbursement measures.  For example, physicians are concerned that they will be penalized if patients don’t comply with their treatment plans. While such reimbursement measures are not entirely new for physicians (remember global capitation reimbursement?) these approaches have largely been abandoned by payers.  Pay for performance may be a difficult transition for physicians.  One bright side is that they may develop greater empathy for the stress of a software reseller who earns money only when his or her prospects accept their proposal.

So, in conclusion, a lot is happening.  Clearly, the intentions are good.  We can only hope that the results will be more positive than the results for the last federal initiative, the Federal HIPAA regulations, which so far have fallen far short of the goal of dramatically simplifying healthcare administration.  Stay tuned.

For more information on EHR training for Medical VARs, e-mail Gary Pritts at: gpritts@eagleconsultingpartners.com

Gary Pritts is not an employee of InvestMed; he is a healthcare, business and information systems consultant with 25 years of experience.  To contact Gary with questions about this article or general government initiatives in healthcare, visit his website at:  www.eagleconsultingpartners.com