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Thursday, April 25, 2013

"What happens when an eligible provider or eligible hospital doesn't pass the [Meaningful Use] audit?"

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Elizabeth Holland, director of the Health Information Technology Initiatives Group for the Office of E-Health Standards & Services.

"They have to return the money."
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ONC revokes firm's EHR certifications
By Joe Carlson, Modern HealthCare
Posted: April 25, 2013 - 3:15 pm ET

For the first time, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS has revoked certifications for two electronic health-record systems, raising troubling questions about how physicians and hospitals should react if the government nixes a system they're already using.

Federal officials require that doctors and hospitals use certified EHR systems in order to receive federal money to defray the cost of converting to EHRs. But on Thursday, the ONC said it decided to revoke certifications for two products on the market after anonymous complaints were lodged about the systems.


EHRMagic, of Santa Fe Springs, Calif., had two of its records systems shot down by the government: EHRMagic-Ambulatory and EHRMagic-Inpatient. Two people familiar with the company interviewed for this story said they were not surprised by the development, since the firm didn't seem able to live up to its promises on the sales side of the operation several years ago.

Calls and e-mails to EHRMagic on Thursday were not returned. Records with the California secretary of state list the 4-year-old company's corporate status as “suspended.”

ONC spokesman Peter Ashkenaz said no healthcare provider has “attested” to using the system, which means that no one had tried to receive federal funding to pay for installation of an EHRMagic system. Since 2011, more than 234,000 organizations and individuals have received a total of $12.7 billion in EHR incentives to install one of the 1,700 systems eligible for payments.

But a blog post Thursday from Carol Bean, director of the certification office at the ONC, makes clear that the office will continue aggressive monitoring for other EHR systems that don't meet the federal requirements. That includes proactive investigations and surveillance by the office, as well as inquiries that stem from tips from the public about shoddy systems.

“We want to be clear,” the blog post says, “the office of certification's role doesn't stop after EHR certification. We are also going to monitor certified EHRs to determine whether they continue to meet our requirements. The doctors, hospitals and other providers that are adopting—and have already adopted—EHRs deserve this and should feel confident that the tools they are using are up to the job of helping their patients get the best care possible.”

Ashkenaz declined to say what a healthcare provider should do if the system it is using ends up retroactively decertified for payments, as EHRMagic's systems were.

Richard Gant, CEO of physician-supply seller Innovative Healthcare Systems in Royal Palm Beach, Fla., said the EHRMagic situation pointed to another major concern about decertification. EHRMagic sells what is known as a “cloud-based” system, meaning that patient information is stored off-site and not physically in a provider's office.

“The biggest issue is, all of your information is on their servers,” he said. “And if they disappear, that information could go away.”...
I'd like to see more of this type of action.

A quick look under the EHRmagic.com hood:


Lordy. "Untitled page" as your home page banner title? Groan... And, no metatags in your html header section? Even my blog has a breadth of metatags.
content='Robert Gladd, Robert E. Gladd, Bobby Gladd, BobbyG, bgladd.com, @BobbyGvegas, REC, LEC, HHS, ONC, ONC-ATCB, CMS, Medicare, Medicaid, AHRQ, NIST, Regional Extension Center, Meaningful Use, CEHRT, Virtual Extension Center, HITRC, ARRA, HITECH, HealthInsight, PQRI, PQRS, MCMP, CalHIPSO, EMR, EHR, PHR, HIE, NHIN, UHIN, HIPAA, CER, EBM, CDS, CPOE, CCR, CCD, CDA, HL7, SNOMED, LOINC, CPT, ICD-9, FFS, Fee For Service, capitation, bundled payments, P4P, Pay For Performance, Beacon Community, Beacon Communities, Electronic Health Records, Electronic Medical Records, Personal Health Records, Health Information Exchange, ASQ, Global Voice of Quality, HCD, ACO, Accountable Care Organization, PCMH, Patient Centered Medical Home, Clinical Quality Measures, workflow, Lean, Gemba, swimlanes diagram, Agile, ThedaCare, John Toussaint, Deming, TQM, Six Sigma, QC, QA, QI, CQI, PDSA, medical, healthcare, health care, David Blumenthal, Donald Berwick, David Kibbe, Brent James, Joe Flower, Jan Gurley, PPACA, ObamaCare, PCORI, CMMI, PCAST, Atul Gawande, Single Payer, Individual Mandate, eClinicalWorks, e-MDs, AthenaHealth, Greenway Medical, Amazing Charts, Allscripts, Alteer, GE Centricity, NextGen, SOAPware, VA, VistA, Medicity, Axolotl, informatics, Health 2.0, THCB, Matthew Holt, #healthit, #ONC, #healthcare, #medicine, #VDTnow, #health2con, #health20 name='keywords'/> 
That's just SEO 101.
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More to come...

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