Hoosier Health Care - Innovation Challenge

Friday, July 12
Hine Hall at IUPUI
8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Be an innovator in the growing health care digital technology industry in Indianapolis! Clinicians, entrepreneurs and developers are encouraged to attend the Hoosier Health Care Innovation Challenge on July 12 to hear challenges posed by area hospitals and health care organizations, form teams, and begin to form solutions. Teams will have an opportunity to submit solutions to the Challenge voting panel.

Hoosier Code 4 Health

Saturday, July 13 and Sunday, July 14
 

Get even more involved with health care digital technology at Hoosier Code 4 Health! As the first ever health-focused code-a-thon in Indiana, you will analyze large data sets, receive input from industry experts, and pitch solutions all within 48 hours.

IHIT is pleased to report that NoMoreClipboardis being recognized for its leadershipin promoting health information exchange (HIE) across providers. NoMoreClipboard has been instrumental in partnering with IHIT as part of an ONC Challenge Grant to promote secure exchange of personal health records among Indiana providers.  NoMoreClipboard recently announced that it will be working to advance electronic patient engagement across the State of Kansas.

The Kansas Health Information Network (KHIN), the health information organization providing technology infrastructure for electronic medical record sharing for the entire state of Kansas, recently announced it has selected NoMoreClipboard to configure and deploy a personal health record (PHR) that will connect patients and clinicians and improve care coordination for more than 2.7 million people in the state.They will benefit by having all of their health information in one location. A list of medications, allergies, procedures, lab results and health conditions will be available to them when the KHIN PHR is fully deployed in 2014. For the first time, Kansas patients will also be able to securely and electronically communicate with all of their health care providers, view and share their visit summaries and obtain relevant educational information using their computers and smartphones. For Kansas providers, this partnership will help them meet the patient engagement meaningful use requirements necessary to receive Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments. This is a huge step forward for healthcare in Kansas."

To learn more about NoMoreClipboard and its efforts with the State of Kansas, click here.

Indiana E-Prescribing has eclipsed 10,000 e-prescribers (10,015 in Dec 2012)

The basic definition of e-prescribing is an electronic transmission of prescription information from a prescriber’s computer, such as a physician, to a pharmacy computer. Hopefully, a patient carrying (or faxing) in a paper prescription will be a thing of the past. E-prescribing will improve patient safety by reducing the possibility of a prescribing error due to various causes including poor handwriting or ambiguous nomenclature. E-prescribing will electronically send an accurate, error-free and understandable prescription directly to a pharmacy from the point-of care.

Indiana has increased the adoption rages of e-prescribing by education, incentives and media efforts. Adoption rates of e-prescribing and electronic medical record (EMR) systems are on the upswing, as prescribers in the ambulatory care segment are increasingly realizing their ability to save lives and costs, through clinical automation. Indian also had 1.86 million e-prescription transactions (e-scripts) which is an average of 185 e-scripts a month for each provider.

Here is Indiana’s latest numbers:

In 2011, Surescripts partnered with PBMs (pharmacy benefit manager) and retail pharmacies to compare the effectiveness of e-prescriptions and paper prescriptions on first fill medication adherence. The data showed a consistent 10% increase in patient first fill medication adherence (i.e., new prescriptions that were picked up by the patient) among physicians who adopted e-prescribing technology. The analysis suggests that the increase in first fill medication adherence combined with other e-prescribing benefits could, over the next 10 years, lead to between $140 billion and $240 billion in health care cost savings and improved health outcomes.

 For more information on Surescripts and e-prescribing visit:

http://www.surescripts.com/about-e-prescribing.aspx

IHIT Increases Incentive Reimbursement for Labs

In an effort to encourage Indiana laboratories, particularly those in rural and underserved areas, to establish connections with an existing Indiana Health Information Organization (HIO), Indiana Health Information Technology, Inc. announces an increase in the reimbursement amount now available under the HIE Connective Incentive Program

IHIT will provide incentives for up to 12 laboratories to establish connections with an existing HIO. The incentive reimbursement will be up to $25,000 per laboratory entity

For more information about enrolling in this incentive program, please click here

As IHIT’s 2011 annual report shows, steady progress is being made towards advancing sustainable, secure, standards-based health information exchange throughout Indiana’s rural communities and underserved populations.

Highlights of 2011 include:

·         101 of 123 acute hospitals have committed to a Health Information Organization

·         2532 active participants  for directed exchange (Push)[includes unique ambulatory providers and individual labs]

·         5511 active participants for query exchange (Pull) )[includes unique ambulatory providers and individual labs]

·         13,365,891 transactions sent (Directed/Push) [includes lab results, discharge summaries, public health results, visit summaries]

·         1,205,317 transactions for patient record inquiries

Click here Annual Report to view the complete annual report which includes information regarding IHIT’s financial statement and project updates.

The Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Task Force on Delivery System Reform and Health IT recently released a set of recommendations for the most effective use of health IT dollars to support delivery system and payment reforms to achieve improved health, better health care, and reductions in the cost of care.  The Health Project is co-led by former Senate majority leaders Tom Daschle and Bill Frist and includes a broad range of nationally respected experts and leaders from many sectors of health care. The Task Force on Delivery System Reform was created to focus on two primary goals: 

•      Identify real-world examples and best practices that facilitate coordinated, accountable, patient-centered care; and

•      Make recommendations for ensuring that current health information technology (IT) efforts support delivery system and payment models shown to improve quality and reduce costs in health care, in ways that best utilize scarce public and private resources.

The report’s findings that health information technology (health IT) “plays a critical role in supporting new models of care and payment designed to achieve health care’s triple aim: improve health, improve the experience of care for patients and families and reduce the cost of care.”  ONC agrees that continued rapid progress on ensuring the adoption and meaningful use of health IT will be aided by, among other things: ongoing progress in the secure exchange of health information, even greater availability of consumer-oriented health IT tools, and building on the already rapid progress on adoption of electronic health records.

These recommendations are supportive of ONC’s vision and efforts to encourage and coordinate adoption of health IT and are consistent with State HIE program activities.

To read the full report, click on the link to take you directly to BPC’s website.

Transforming Health Care: The Role of Health IT

The numbers are in and IHIT, with the help of Indiana’s five regionally-based Health Information Organizations (HIO’s), is making steady progress towards advancing sustainable, secure, standards-based health information exchange throughout Indiana’s rural communities and underserved populations.

Some highlights as of December 31, 2011:

• 101 of 123 acute hospitals have signed contracts with a HIO
• 2532 active participants  for directed exchange (Push)[includes unique ambulatory providers and individual labs]
• 5511 active participants for query exchange (Pull) )[includes unique ambulatory providers and individual labs]
• 13,365,891 transactions sent (Directed/Push) [includes lab results, discharge summaries, public health results, visit summaries]
• 1,205,317 transactions for patient record inquiries

As the numbers show, Indiana is well on its way towards securely moving electronic health data in a meaningful way to improve coordination among health providers to help them achieve improved health outcomes for their patients.

Late last year, IHIT launched the Indiana eHealth pledge. Twenty-five (25) organizations have joined the pledge to date. From the payer/governmental side, the organizations represent the largest commercial payer, Medicaid, the State Public Health Entity. From the healthcare side, the organizations represent 49 hospitals (41% of Indiana hospitals), large specialty physician groups, a regional reference laboratory, and the largest student health clinic. All five of the sub-state health information organizations have signed the pledge.

The pledge was launched in conjunction with the Office of the National Coordinators eHealth pledge. These organizations are pledging to providing education and greater access to health information for the patients and consumers they serve. Providing patients and their care givers with timely, accurate health information will lead to improved engagement and quality outcomes. IHIT, in its role as the State HIE, is proud to push such an initiative and collaborate with the organizations working to improve health care.

Next steps for the pledge include development of marketing materials for the program and those that join. IHIT will be developing a voluntary recognition/rating program to identify organizations that excel in providing consumers with education and health information. If you are an organization interested in engagement of the health care consumer, join the Indiana Health pledge today.

More information on the ONC efforts can be found at: http://www.healthit.gov/

To join the Indiana pledge, download the pledge form at: Indinana eHealth Pledge

IPLA’s prescription monitoring program, INSPECT, and their Medical Licensing Board of Indiana both win national award. 

The Indiana Professional Licensing Agency’s (IPLA) prescription monitoring program, INSPECT, received national recognition recently when it was awarded the Administrators in Medicine (AIM) “Best of Boards” award on April 17, 2013.  The award recognized both INSPECT and the Medical Licensing Board of Indiana’s recent efforts to become the 1^st state nationally to integrate prescription drug monitoring data into an electronic healthcare system.

Indiana Health Information Technology, Inc. (IHIT) is proud to support the imPatient Movement announced at this week’s HIMSS13 conference in New Orleans. The imPatient Movement was formed by an independent coalition of health information technology providers, healthcare professionals and organizations, including NoMoreClipboard, Microsoft HealthVault and IHIT.

The purpose of the imPatient campaign is to promote improved patient/provider communication through the use of portable electronic information exchange.

To learn more or to become part of the movement, click here

From PledgeIT (HHS/ONC);

We invite you to join a volunteer effort to “automate the Blue Button” and develop standards and specifications that would allow patients to not only download their health information to their personal computer, but also to privately and securely automate the sending of that data to their preferred holding place.  This initiative will kick-off with a webinar on Wednesday, August 15^th from 4:00 – 5:00PM Eastern. 

To register, go to: http://wiki.siframework.org/ABBI+Kickoff+Meeting+Registration

Why? Consumer Access is A Big Priority

At the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), we have been placing increasing emphasis on consumers and patients--empowering them to be partners in their health through information technology. What can consumers do with their health data?

·         Better understand their health and make more informed decisions

·         Help to make sure that they and all of their care team members are on the same page

·         Improve the accuracy and completeness of the information

·         Plug it into apps and tools that promise to make information truly available when and where it’s needed

Underpinning all of these actions is electronic access to health data, which most Americans don’t yet have. But soon access to this information may be a reality for more patients and their family members.

It’s called Blue Button.  Two years ago, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) added a simple, easy to recognize “Blue Button” to their patient portal (My HealtheVet), which gave individual users the opportunity to download their data to their personal computer.

Since then, the use of Blue Button has grown into a movement – a commitment by many of the country’s largest data holders – including the Federal government – to get personal health information out of proprietary silos and into the hands of the consumers who want a holistic picture of their health and health care.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid, TRICARE, United HealthCare, Aetna, and the Department of Defense have all begun offering individual’s own health care data (or will soon offer their data) to their beneficiaries in a printable, downloadable format supported by the Blue Button specifications.  Several hundreds of thousands of veterans, members of the military, and Medicare beneficiaries have already downloaded their data through Blue Button.

Many of you have been direct contributors to this effort through the ONC Pledge Program, the Patient Access Summit, and other avenues, and our thanks go to you for making this important tool available to your members .

Join Us Aug 15: Automating Blue Button Initiative Webinar

Now, ONC and VA are collaborating to take this movement one step further, and we’d like you to join us.

We need experts to develop standards, developers to pilot the technology, innovations to push the envelope, and patients and providers to test that it works. For example, this initiative could enable patients to have their doctors or insurance companies automatically “copy them” on any updates to their personal health information. In another scenario, patients could “subscribe” to feeds that privately and securely send them updates to their health information, much as they currently subscribe to podcasts and news feeds.

The new effort will be a key part of the ONC’s Pledge Program in 2012-2013. It will be run through the Standards and Interoperability (S&I) Framework: a self-organizing, open, collaborative community of volunteers from the public and private sectors who are focused on providing the tools, services, and guidance to facilitate the functional exchange of health information.

Please join us for a webinar on Wednesday August 15, 2012 from 4:00 to 5:00 PM Eastern to learn more about the Automate Blue Button initiative, its charter, and timelines. To register for the webinar, go to http://wiki.siframework.org/ABBI+Kickoff+Meeting+Registration

Health department officials have a new tool for use with CHIRP; see its debut in a webinar May 30

The Indiana State Department of Health is developing a new Web tool that will give individuals direct access to immunization records within the Children and Hoosier’s Immunization Registry Program (CHIRP). The tool is still in the development stages and ISDH officials would like your feedback.

The new CHIRP feature, intended to ease the burden of office visits and empower parents to manage their child’s care, is tentatively set to roll out July 1. Physicians, local health departments and school nurses will all play a role in its success.

Therefore, the ISDH invites you to attend a webinar Wednesday, May 30, from 12 – 1:30 p.m. EST to introduce the draft tool, explore how it will impact you, and answer your questions. This video will be recorded and accessible for viewing following the webinar.

View the online link for Streaming Video here. After opening the link, go to “Live Videos” and select the appropriate Live Streaming Video. The State Health Commissioner will provide additional details soon via email.