Medical Billing Blog: Section - Medical Data
Archive of all Articles in the Medical Data Section
This is the archive containing links to all articles written in the Medical Data section of our blog.
Click any of the article links below to read the entire article or browse another section to the right to read articles on another subject.
Collaboration Can Aid EHR Use and Adoption in Behavioral Health
Perceived ease of EHR use and perceived usefulness of the technology itself are driving factors toward EHR adoption with physicians in behavioral health, according to a recent study. However, there is still resistance to EHR adoption within behavioral health, which could be eased through greater collaboration. Working collaboratively to mitigate concerns about workflow burden can help improve attitudes toward EHR use, explained a study published in AHIMA’s Perspectives in Health Information Management. Additionally, collaboration can “demonstrate the value of EHRs to improve professional practice, efficiency, safety, effectiveness, and patient outcomes.” “Despite the advances in and wide availability of health information technology, many behavioral healthcare clinicians have not adopted EHRs,” wrote …
Choosing an EHR for its Usability
“The usability of the system is probably the most important factor in making an informed choice of which EHR to use for your practice. Most every bit of software says that it is easy to use, but how can you choose an EHR that is actually usable? We recommend choosing an EHR that is ONC certified. The MU2 certification program required that EHR vendors have a user-centered design approach, and submit a summative usability evaluation as part of their §170.314(g)(3) Safety-enhanced design certification submission. These usability documents are made available to the public on the CHPL site. Look at the published usability document for the EHR that you are considering. …
Increasing EHR use of problem lists among clinicians can save money
Healthcare organizations, policymakers, and health IT developers can take steps to increase clinician EHR use of problem lists for improved health outcomes and clinical efficiency, according to researchers from the University of Utah Department of Biomedical Informatics and Intermountain Healthcare. Hodge et al. conducted a systematic literary review of 848 full-text articles and included 110 articles in a thematic analysis to gain broad insights into the characteristics that define a useful EHR problem list, as well as the myriad factors that contribute to its success as a resource. Ultimately, researchers determined there is a need to improve problem lists in ways that encourage increased utilization by clinicians. “There is also …
CMS Modifies E/M EHR Clinical Documentation Requirements
The American College of Physicians (ACP) recently applauded a CMS decision to change EHR clinical documentation requirements. Teaching physicians can now verify medical student documentation in a patient’s EHR related to evaluation and management (E/M) code services. “Prior to the change, physicians were required to re-document most work performed by medical students — which is often very thorough and based on careful and supervised evaluation — rather than review, refer to, amend, or correct the student note,” clarified ACP President Jack Ende, MD in a public statement. Changing the EHR clinical documentation requirement allows teaching physicians to educate medical students about EHR use within a more streamlined workflow and reduces …
EHR Use and Administrative Burden Accelerate Burnout
In response to a new study about high levels of physician burnout among family physicians, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center family physician Donald O. Mack, MD, suggested the recent transition to a value-based care system and increased EHR use may have augmented the problem. “Burnout is associated with lower patient satisfaction and care quality, higher medical error rates and malpractice risk, higher physician and staff turnover, physician substance abuse/addiction, and physician suicide,” he wrote. “The causes are numerous, and in many cases physicians point to the increasing demands of electronic medical records, quality metrics, administrative tasks such as prior authorization, and value-based payment requirements, which take time away from …
RCM tip: Invest in automated rules engine to improve RCM
Investing in automation tools, such as a rules engine, can help healthcare organizations decrease their administrative workload, according to Andrew Wade, practice administrator at Conway, S.C.-based Coastal Orthopedics. Mr. Wade shared the following tip with Becker’s Hospital Review: “If we want to truly free up providers from administrative burden and empower them to do the work they love to do — spending more time with patients and delivering quality care — organizations need to invest in tools that automate tasks wherever possible. Thanks to our technology’s rules engine, our claims can be automatically verified and some errors automatically resolved based on knowledge gleaned from the network. We are getting cleaner …
MIPS: The Day of Reckoning
One of my favorite books is The Big Short by Michael Lewis. It was eventually made into a movie by the same name and gives a clear view of the housing bubble that burst 10 years ago and pushed the US economy into the Great Recession. What fascinates me was the ability of some to predict, and profit, from knowing when the collapse would occur. They were able to delve into the details of millions of mortgages and see when the adjustable rates would suddenly increase leading to escalating mortgage payments and boosting the default rates dramatically. The subsequent collapse was unavoidable, and predictable. What does this have to do …
Newly-Designed EHR Notes May Improve Usability
Showing less data in physician EHR notes may produce more benefits for physician productivity, according to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine (JABFM). The study by Jeffery Beldon, MD et al. compared different physician EHR note designs to see which design physicians found most efficient, accurate, and usable when attempting to obtain information for ambulatory chronic disease care. Researchers devised four physician note designs and tested the designs on 16 primary care physicians in random order. Physicians were instructed to find key information in the EHR notes during timed tasks. Physicians then gave each note design a usability rating and new feature …
Is Your EMR User Friendly?
A common complaint about EMRs is that while they might have technical capability, they might not have real world usability, or be “user friendly”. Thus, you might be able to enter A, B and C; but finding the previous values of A, B and C might be challenging, and seeing the history of A, B and C might not be possible. As I sat in front of one of my medical providers recently, who is a late and reluctant convert to EMRs, he created an on paper list of my previous values as he inefficiently hunted through my now online history. And unless he types them back in in a …
EHR companies refuted claims of violating HIPAA
The EHR Association (EHRA) Executive Committee has fired back at accusations that EHR companies are partially to blame for interoperability problems, claiming health data exchange is progressing quickly. The association published a response to an earlier post on Health Affairs Blog that accused EHR and health IT companies of monetizing the custody of patient protected health information (PHI). Former ONC Chief Privacy Officer Lucia Savage urged the Office of Inspector General (OIG) to enforce provisions of HIPAA prohibiting business associates such as EHR developers from using PHI for business operations. She stated some EHR companies may be leveraging ownership of patient PHI for profit. “Building a revenue stream out of …
