CMS Touts Health IT Job Creation, E-Prescribing Growth
A dramatic rise in e-prescribing and strong job growth are just two areas the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is highlighting in a new fact sheet that details the widening impact of health information technology (IT).
According to CMS, more than 50,000 health IT-related jobs have been created since the enactment of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act in 2009. Community colleges have risen to the challenge of preparing individuals to enter the growing field, training more than 17,000 professionals in health IT as of January 2013. Students also are eying graduate-level degrees: Universities had graduated more than 820 post-graduate and masters-level health IT professionals as of September 2012.
Another figure CMS emphasizes is the growth of e-prescribing. Office-based physician use of the practice rose from 0.8% to 53% between December 2006 and January 2013. CMS also notes that more than 94% of pharmacies now are e-prescribing.
In addition, more than 85% of eligible hospitals are participating in the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs, part of what CMS envisions as a “modernized, interconnected, and improved systems of care delivery.” Between 2008 and 2012, the number of hospitals using EHR systems with functionalities that exceed the requirements of Stage 1 Meaningful Use jumped from 9.4% to 44%, according to CMS. Physicians also are embracing EHR systems with advanced functionalities. In the same four-year time frame, adoption rates among doctors grew from 17% to 40%.
The largely rosy assessment comes at a time when some EHR stakeholders, including hospitals, vendors, and interest groups, have raised questions about how systems are being implemented and whether some goals and deadlines are too ambitious.
For example, the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) said in comments released earlier this year that “every desirable EHR-related objective cannot feasibly be met by 2016, nor do we see any value in attempting the rushed adoption of various EHR users by that time.”
Looking to the future, CMS said the Department of Health and Human Services continues to aggressively pursue the goal of having 50% of physician offices using EHRs and 80% of eligible hospitals receiving meaningful use incentive payments by the end of the year. The department also is increasing its emphasis on interoperability.
New HIE Framework
As healthcare IT continues its progress, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has unveiled a voluntary framework detailing the office’s guiding principles for setting up a secure electronic health information exchange (HIE).
Intended for entities that establish HIE policies—for example, private companies, state governments, public-private partnerships, or health information exchange organizations—the “Governance Framework for Trusted Electronic Health Information Exchange” shows “what matters most to ONC when it comes to national health information exchange governance,” Farzad Mostashari, national coordinator for health information technology, writes in a post on the Health IT Buzz blog. It details steps the ONC recommends entities should take into consideration when setting up an exchange, arranging them under organizational, trust, business, and technical principles. The framework does not advocate specific solutions, but rather lays out milestones and outcomes the ONC expects from entities as they implement electronic HIE.
To read the framework and more about its principles, please click here (pdf).
Posted: May 8, 2013