Best Hospital IT 2016: #1 Small Hospital
Thibodaux Regional Medical Center, Louisiana
IT Staff: 15
Overall Score: 77.37%

Technology and clinical staff members at Thibodaux Regional Medical Center in Thibodaux, Louisiana, have for the past year been focused on care transformation through the use of information technology.

"We've been combining big data analytics with physician improvements and going after the Triple Aim of lowering costs, improving quality and increasing patient engagement," said Bernie Clement, CIO at Thibodaux Regional Medical Center.

"We've been leveraging data platforms, analytics, Six Sigma and lean technologies and have reaped some great outcomes and improvements," he added. "Our biggest wins have been around sepsis, our total joint program and pneumonia care."

In recent years, IT itself has transformed at the regional medical center, which also took the top spot in the small category in 2015.

"IT has gone from operational things like taking the paper record to electronic, to now where it's transitioning to how to add value to all of this electronic information," Clement said.

Healthcare IT News Best Hospital IT Departments 2016: 
⇒ Meet the winners
⇒ CIOs reveal what makes an IT shop great 
⇒Interactive map: Best Hospital IT Departments 

"For example, with care transformation, you now take that full EHR and perform analytics and understand what the real drivers of great care are. And then the ability to get that understanding into the hands of your caregivers and your patients and ultimately really change what we do in the hospitals."

Moving forward, Clement said Thibodaux, among other things, must shift to a single, all-encompassing EHR.

"The level of integration you need between different venues of care makes it incredibly difficult, even with interoperability standards, to make value-added care happen," he said. "So one of the biggest things we need to get to is a single medical record across ambulatory and acute care settings.

"That's longer term," he added. "But in the near-term, we are deploying secure texting that will help improve how our care teams coordination with each other, and help us deliver clinical alerts to our care teams. So now we can send alerts not just in the EHR but if the need is substantial enough and immediate enough we can rely on secure texting alerts to get information to our people that much quicker.”

Workplace culture was one of 87 questions senior executives (CIO, CMIOs, etc.), directors of IT, clinical and systems analysts, technicians, help desk staff and others responded to on our survey.

Overall Ranking

After advancing the uses of both Apple HealthKit and Apple ResearchKit in his position as Director of Mobile Strategy at Duke, Ricky Bloomfield, MD, is leaving the university to take a job on Apple's health team.

A colleague of Bloomfield's broke the news on Twitter today and Apple confirmed the news.

The company declined to go into detail about what Bloomfield's role at Apple would be, but he's not the first high-profile hire the company has made lately. Since June 1st, the company has hired Rajiv B. Kumar, MD, a pediatric endocrinologist from Stanford University with experience implementing Apple's HealthKit to help patients manage their diabetes; Stephen Friend, MD, president and co-founder of Sage Bionetworks which built the data infrastructure for a number of ResearchKit apps; and Mike Evans, MD, a Toronto doctor who boasts 70,000 followers on his medical-themed YouTube channel.

[Also: Duke Medicine talks HealthKit-Epic integration]

Bloomfield was at Duke in 2014 when Apple announced Apple Health and Apple HealthKit. Duke became one of the first hospitals to integrate with Apple HealthKit via Epic, and to use the platform to incorporate patient-generated health data into its EHR. The initial pilot used HealthKit to track blood pressure and weight for patients with cancer and heart conditions. Bloomfield and Ochsner CIO Richard Milani spoke about HealthKit at a packed session at 2014's mHealth Summit. Two years later, at MobiHealthNews's event in San Francisco, Bloomfield broke the news that Apple would add HealthKit support for the HL7 Continuity of Care Document to iOS 10.

ResearchKit, Apple's research-focused follow-up to HealthKit, also proved to be an area of interest for Bloomfield, who helped create Autism Beyond, Duke’s ResearchKit study designed to increase knowledge about how autism manifests in children. The study is looking at the application of a video analysis technology to quantify and analyze the emotions of children so that one day parents may be able to use it as a screening tool for conditions like autism, anxiety, and other behavior related conditions.

[Also: Duke liberates Epic EHR data with Apple HealthKit and FHIR]

Autism and Beyond includes a number of short surveys for parents and three videos for children to watch. As the kids watch the videos, which are based on the same kind of stimuli exercises child psychologists use during in-person behavior encoding sessions, Duke's app is using the iPhone's camera to analyze the child's expressions. Parents have the option of sending researchers the recorded video of their child along with the encoded data, or if they'd rather, they can opt to just send the analysis data without the full video recording. The video recordings the researchers do receive will also help them fine tune their algorithms.

This story first appeared on MobiHealthNews.

Twitter: @HealthITNews

Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services gave healthcare providers what they have rallied long and hard to get as participants in the Meaningful Use EHR Incentive Program: a 90-day EHR reporting period in 2016 and 2017.

Also, CMS is making changes under the Medicare EHR Incentive Program for eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals attesting to meaningful use by eliminating the clinical decision support and computerized order entry objectives and measures beginning in 2017.

The changes also apply to hospitals that are eligible to participate in both the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs – dual-eligible hospitals.

[EHRs getting better? Readers rank vendors higher than last year in new survey]

Also, CMS is reducing a subset of thresholds for the remaining objectives and measures for Modified Stage 2 and Stage 3.

CMS is finalizing an application process for a one-time significant hardship exception to the Medicare EHR Incentive Program for certain eligible professionals in 2017 that are also transitioning to MIPS – the Merit-based Incentive Payment System

As CMS officials put it, the additions increase flexibility, lower the reporting burden for providers, and focus on the exchange of health information and using technology to support patient care.

HIMSS and CHIME, both healthcare IT industry advocates, lobbied for the 90-day reporting versus the full year reporting.

In a letter to acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt on September 1, HIMSS CEO Stephen Lieber and HIMSS Board Chair Michael Zaroukian, MD called swift finalization of a 90-day meaningful use reporting period for 2016.

Meaningful Use, Stage 3 is slated to begin in 2018 with a full-year reporting period. 

Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com

Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

C. Martin Harris, MD, has been chief information officer at Cleveland Clinic since 1996. During those two decades he's helped establish the health system as one of the leading-edge innovators in health information technology.

In his new book, "It's About Patient Care: Transforming Healthcare Information Technology the Cleveland Clinic Way," Harris gives firsthand perspective on the ways IT-enabled, patient-centric care can effect big improvements in clinical quality.

He also offers a guidebook, of sorts, for other providers looking to follow Cleveland Clinic's lead, with advice for the design and implementation of IT systems, EHR optimization, care coordination, patient engagement and more.

Harris spoke with Healthcare IT News about some lessons learned in his years as one of the world's most respected healthcare CIOs, and lays out his vision for the future of value-based care.

Q. Why did you decide to write this book?
A. The Cleveland Clinic has built an integrated health information technology network that connects all of its caregivers across many locations. With this infrastructure, it implemented a single, common electronic health record system. We continue to add image management, data capture and analysis, reporting transparency, and an entire menu of systems. Like us, many others across the country are taking this technological journey. I wrote this book to share what we've learned in the hopes that some of our best practices might help speed the creation of a more technology-enabled healthcare system that will better serve patients.
 
Q. Do you feel we're at a pivotal moment – either in health IT generally, or in your career – that made this a logical time for some perspective?
A. We're in a pivotal moment historically because the power and availability of technology solutions is inviting everyone in our industry to begin imagining how their organizations might benefit from a customized technology transformation. Personally, my path forward became clear when I started my career and applied IT and computerized tools to practicing medicine. Everything that followed – all of my experiences at Cleveland Clinic, my association with my colleagues in HIMSS, both nationally and internationally, the opportunities to work with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Health Information Technology Standards Committee and the director of the National Institutes of Health – has all flowed directly from that moment when I realized that information and its management could transform the practice of medicine.

Q. What lessons have you learned in pioneering healthcare IT at Cleveland Clinic?
A. Every participant in the practice must be a full partner in our shared transformative journey. Communication, at every phase of every project, is critical. Caregivers' needs, patients' demands, and regulators and payers' requirements must all be indexed and considered, analyzed, and resolved in a way that reflects the comfort and consideration of the people who will use the systems we design, build, and implement.

Q. The power of technology is expanding as software, devices, and systems are integrated into coordinated networks. Where is the Cleveland Clinic at in this process?
A. We have a full range of interactions, from a centralized help desk and other support functions, that can be efficiently delivered across the enterprise to highly specialized, highly specific solutions that require the full attention of extremely skilled, onsite resources – so the presence and power of technology systems is woven into the fabric of the Cleveland Clinic practice model.

Q. You say that EHRs are now as integral to the practice of medicine as a stethoscope or X-ray. As a longtime leader in the field, are you surprised it's taken this long?
A. It's taken actually less than 20 years for medical practice to fully embrace technology. The Internet only started becoming part of a significant portion of the population around the year 2000. Smartphones have put that Internet in the palm of your hand for perhaps half that time. We've gone from online banking catching on after the Y2K bug passed without major incident in 2000, to secure online virtual visits that connect physicians and patients through high-speed Internet systems in about 15 years.

Q. Cleveland Clinic is a world-class institution. But what advice do you have for a smaller hospital, with limited budgets and staff, that's still using its EHR for basic care but would like to do more with its IT systems and patient data?
A. Start thinking about your IT investment differently. Traditionally, those charged with running a healthcare organization considered an IT expenditure in terms of a return on investment. They accounted for an IT system much like you would a fixed piece of equipment that could depreciate, and bill for using. But by having that opinion, they will miss a big piece of technology's true value.

The EHR is quickly becoming the one, single practice environment in which every member of a patient's care team comes together in the same place. As this technology becomes interoperable, practices that do not participate in this contemporary virtual practice space will exclude themselves from it – which is not a strategy for success over the long term.

Q. How do EHRs empower patients to take more control of their own healthcare?
A. EHRs are a patient's direct link to the information recorded about them, as well as the ongoing activities that help to keep them healthy and address issues. I can't think of a better way for a patient to become more involved in the activities that will help them to preserve their precious health, than to be connected – anytime, anywhere – directly to their care team. To see what healthcare providers can see and to be able to ask questions about it, either during a visit, or through an online service like the one we offer at Cleveland Clinic that we call "Ask Your Doc," make the relationship active and dynamic.

Q. Telemedicine systems are eliminating geography and physical distance as barriers to expert care. How has telemedicine been used at your institution?
A. At Cleveland Clinic, the idea that we collectively call "distance health" is an organized set of solutions that helps remove distance as a consideration when we connect the right patient, to the right clinician, at the right time and place. Patients with serious health issues are connected directly to some of the world's leading experts. We've also given millions of patients access to their own personal medical information through MyChart. Critical care specialists serve as consulting monitors to intensive care units across our health system through an advanced EHR-based connectivity system called eHospital. And our Express Care Online service, which quickly connects patients to doctors through an Internet-based virtual visit system, helps patients decide how they want to interact with our organization.

Q. You made the statement, "medicine at its most technically advanced is medicine at its best, because it is still rooted in the bedrock principles of compassion and healing." How so?
A. Since its beginning, the concept of providing care to someone in need has remained essentially unchanged. a person with knowledge and experience focuses on a patient's situation, gathers information, applies critical thinking skills to the problem, identifies potential causes, tests each idea until a diagnosis is verified, and then creates and conducts a treatment plan. Technology is simply a set of tools that a clinician has available to make the process of care work better.

Q. Many physicians complain about EHRs, saying their documentation requirements are burdensome, and cause them to have to look away from patients in the exam room. Do their arguments have merit, in your view?
A. Yes, that argument has some validity, but the EHR itself is not the issue. Rather, it's more about the timeline of the EHR as a medical tool's development. Clinicians are being asked to account in much greater detail the care they deliver. As more information becomes available through the EHR and other systems, demand for that information will increase. But because capabilities have been added to the EHR over time, doctors have assumed responsibility. What needs to happen now, which is something the Cleveland Clinic is doing, is to decide who on a care team would be the most appropriate person to do each task. By spreading out the tasks, we can help everyone practice to the top of their license, and free each contributor to the encounter to concentrate on what they were trained to do.

Q. Please shed some light on the coming frontiers of health information and technology.
A. In the last chapter of my book I write about the coming of what I call the Internet of Healthcare – a systematic evolution of a portion of the Internet as it exists today to meet people's healthcare needs worldwide. Imagine "a secure portion of the Internet that uses the web's infrastructure not only as it presently exists, but as it is developing in both its speed and capacity to contain and move information," to bring patients, providers, and everyone else involved in the contemporary medical ecosystem together into "a protected digital practice space that is connected to thinking EHR technologies in a way that will allow us all to transcend the limitations of our current structures and discover ways of doing things that will change the way medicine is conceived and practiced."

I believe this can truly happen if everyone starts moving toward simplicity, while simultaneously making every effort to "avoid the kind of magical thinking that might encourage us to place a totally unjustified level of faith in our technology's inherent ability to design, create, or police itself."

I go on to say that it's important to have built-in mechanisms that can monitor and correct automatically for any deliberate or inadvertent lapses that may impinge upon security and trust.

Finally, I write that "we must demand that the Internet of Healthcare, as it evolves and grows, is simple enough to be used by people with widely varying amounts of experience and sophistication, while remaining inherently flexible enough to support and encourage the kind of ongoing innovation that will lead to entirely new service categories and treatment advances about which we can only dream today, and that will only be imagined tomorrow."

Healthcare IT News Best Hospital IT Departments 2016: 
⇒ Meet the winners
⇒ CIOs reveal what makes an IT shop great 
⇒Interactive map: Best Hospital IT Departments 
⇒ See the people who make their IT departments winners

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has named the Phase 1 winners of its Move Health Data Forward Challenge, which seeks innovative uses of APIs than can enable consumers to more easily share their personal health data.
 
The total prize amount available for the three phases of the Move Health Data Forward Challenge is $250,000, with the two finalists winning a total of $75,000.

Each Phase 1 winner – who had to show the technical, operational, financial and business aspects of their proposed technologies – will receive a $5,000 award.
 

• With an eye toward improving coordinated care in ACOs through open standards, TrustedCare and ARM aim to develop devices that enable patients to interact with multiple providers in a secure, authenticated and auditable way.
• The CareApprove app from CedarBridge Group enables consumers to consent to share their data with their providers from their smartphone and, optionally, to choose which sections of information may be shared with a given provider.
• The HealthToGo service from EMR Direct is focused on apps that can integrate patient data from multiple sources through software that supports scalable deployment of APIs.
• Docket, from Foxhall Wythe, optimizes patient-health care provider communication by empowering mobile users to securely maintain their critical health information and authorize the transmission of that information to trusted care professionals.
• Technology from kreateIoT, Technatomy and Koncero aims to give people power to both access their health information electronically and also actively direct their health information's flow to help make informed decisions through a browser on a laptop or mobile app. The team is using SMART and FHIR to create a secure way of sharing sensitive patient data.
• The HealthyMePHR system from Lush Group enables patients to import their health data from their primary care EHR system, define how it is shared with others, and authorize electronic access. Other features will speed patient clinical data sharing on a patient-by-patient basis.
• Live and Leave Well is an end-of-life planning platform designed to help individuals create, manage and share end of life plans using APIs.
• MedGrotto, developed by SpunJohn Consultants, gives patients an easy, simple and secure platform to store and access their complete health record while sharing with their providers and/or surrogates with fully customizable access levels from any device, anytime and anywhere.
• MyHealthRec.com, from Thoughtkeg Application Services Corporation, is an enhanced patient portal web application that uses modern web technologies for front-end design that is responsive to users and enables patients and their proxies to control the movement of their health data.
• The tools developed by Resilient Network Systems, Webshield and SAFE Biopharma, in partnership with Carebox and InterSystems, aims gives consumers the ability to conveniently access and share their own health records on demand. It will demonstrate a unique nationwide capability to conveniently verify a consumer's identity, locate and electronically request a consumer's records, and deliver them to a secure cloud-based personal storage service.
   

The ten winners now move to Phase 2, where up to five finalists will be awarded $20,000 each for prototypes and test performance of their solutions. Those winners will move to Phase 3, which will award $50,000 for up to two winners each based on the participant's ability to implement their solution.
 
"As health information technology becomes more accessible, consumers are playing an even greater role in how and when their health information is exchanged or shared," said National Coordinator Vindell Washington, MD, in a statement. "The Move Health Data Forward Challenge will help consumers unleash their health data and put it to work."

Healthcare IT News reveals Best Hospital IT Departments 2016: 
⇒ Meet the winners
⇒ CIOs reveal what makes an IT shop great 
⇒Interactive map: Best Hospital IT Departments 
⇒ See the people who make their IT departments winners

PHOENIX — Tony Scott is perhaps the biggest bigwig in information technology. He is the CIO of the United States, with an office on the White House campus. He is the third CIO of the United States, appointed by President Barack Obama on February 5, 2015. When it comes to IT in the government: What he says, goes.

Scott gave a special address to attendees at the CHIME 2016 CIO Fall Forum, where he emphasized two key points about the realm of IT today: the process of digitization and the threat inherent in maximum interoperability.

Scott discussed a key matter in health IT today, which, according to him, is the threat posed by the technical paradigm of the last 40 years: maximum interoperability.

"It's a design principle that has served us really well — until now," he said. "The specs have gotten so good, manufacturing has gotten so good, it's just assumed everything is going to work. We have focused on interoperability as the prime design point, but we have failed to go the next step: I can interoperate with you, but should I? Is that thing I am hooking up to reliable, is it what it represents itself to be, or is it masquerading as something, or is it truly operating the way it should? There is a whole set of questions that now one really wants to ask with a cybersecurity lens in mind."

Scott said it is fortunate that there is a lot of investment today going into answering these questions, to support a more secure IT environment and allow these questions to be asked, answered, configured and operated.

"We have to move there," he said. "There is no really easy way to bubble wrap around old technology to do that work. CIOs have to be the visionaries that say there is a different way to do this."

[Also: CIOs reveal what it takes to make a great IT shop]

Scott also discussed what he called "true digitization" taking place in healthcare and elsewhere. 

"Digitization of the enterprise is a big issue; the transformations taking place in nearly every part of the U.S. economy, and in nearly every country around the world, are tremendous," Scott said. "Much of the money we've spent on technology over the last 35 to 40 years has been on automating manual processes. The workflow or activity didn't change much. Now we are in this new era of mobile devices and great networks and sensors, meaning we don't have to do and probably should not do work the way it was done before." 

This transformation of how things work is digitization, and it's been seen most notably in media, entertainment and banking, Scott explained.

"One important thing about digitization that is the missing link that many people don't appreciate is that the organization chart really is the challenge, it gets in the way of us realizing our full potential," he said. "If you look at the technology architecture, the applications, the infrastructure, how work gets done, and where the seams are, if that is a one-to-one match for your organization chart, you are probably in trouble. You probably are not thinking digital and not seizing the opportunity there through the use of modern technology."

A better sign for true digitization is when every IT design an organization creates starts from a customer viewpoint, thinking about what the customers needs are and how he or she wants to get information and use it, Scott said.

"That is real digitization," he explained. "You should not have to understand what the organization chart of the institution is in order to get the information you need. But in most institutions the way we fund things and have governance over them is too often tightly bound with the organization chart in the industry we serve. Lessons learned in other industries show that digitization will blow up that paradigm. Economics and customer demand drive you to a completely different place."

Healthcare IT News' Best Hospital IT Departments 2016: 
⇒ Meet the winners
⇒ CIOs reveal what makes an IT shop great 
⇒Interactive map: Best Hospital IT Departments 
⇒ See the people who make their IT departments winners

Electronic health records certainly enjoy their share of controversy and criticism. The software is hard for clinicians to use, the data therein more often than not is difficult to exchange with other systems and it appears there is little relief in sight. 

So it's not entirely surprising that even while EHRs are storming toward near-ubiquity among healthcare providers many forward-looking health IT professionals are already predicting the post-EHR era.

When Healthcare IT News interviewed CIOs whose teams won our Best Hospital IT Departments 2016 awards, we asked for their take on the future of EHRs.

"We're kind of over this whole meaningful use thing. Everybody can do it. There are enough EHRs now to satisfy the need. We've got to look beyond that," said Keith Neumann, CIO at Roper St. Francis. (Winner's profile: #5 Large Hospital)

Neumann said that even as Roper St. Francis is undertaking a rip-and-replace enteprise transition from McKesson to Cerner. He added that the health system is looking at how to use the millions of data points it has and digest such information for decisionmaking purposes.

Inspira Health is making similar moves and looking to pull data from disparate sources, including bots and social media, into its EHR, thereby shifting the focus away from the electronic medical record as a clinical tool, CIO Tom Pacek said. (Winner's profile: #4 Large hospital.)

"The EHR is going to become just another transaction system," Pacek said. "But the analytics will tell us more and more about patients."

Lucile Packard Children's CIO Ed Kopetsky is adding barcoding, computerized physician order entry and ramping up its focus on patient safety with the EHR. (Winner's profile: #3 Super hospital.)

Kopetsky is less convinced, however, that a post-EHR era is nigh. Instead, he said EHRs will keep evolving with better user interfaces, clinical processes and integration between various systems.

"But as for end of the road for EHR? It better not be or it will have failed. We have had a negative impact on physician productivity of at least 10 percent," Kopetsky added. "We shifted work and we're doing work by physicians that wasn't done before. We have not solved that problem industry-wide."

Chris Hickie, the IT director at Mahaksa Health Partnership, added that the meaningful use incentive program has proven its value in driving EHR adoption and offered a suggestion for moving the software programs forward — whether the future holds a post-EHR era or otherwise. (Winner's profile: #2 Small hospital.)

"We don't give EHR vendors enough time and resources to truly innovate," said Hickie. "If all we do as a nation is regulate, regulate, regulate we don't give these companies enough time to truly innovate. Perhaps some flexibility could allow these vendors to bring more innovation."

Healthcare IT News' Best Hospital IT Departments 2016: 
⇒ Meet the winners
⇒ CIOs reveal what makes an IT shop great 
⇒Interactive map: Best Hospital IT Departments 
⇒ See the people who make their IT departments winners

The crucial foundation of the U.S. healthcare system and its patients rests upon interoperability and the ability of providers to make the transition to efficient flow of electronic health information.

So said the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information in its annual report to congress, asserting the need for interoperability to further the goals set forth in ambitious projects such as the Precision Medicine Initiative.

With nearly all of hospitals (96 percent) and 78 percent of physician offices now using certified electronic health record technology, it's no longer enough to merely adopt these tools, according to ONC. The healthcare industry needs to fully utilize the EHR and other health IT tools to improve patient care and outcomes.

"The impact of the dramatic increase in health IT adoption since passage of the HITECH Act goes beyond digitizing paper health records," the authors wrote. "The rapid adoption of health IT has facilitated increased use of functionalities that have real-world clinical impacts."

To increase interoperability, ONC is focusing on three priorities:

• The creation and promotion of common standards for seamless data exchange, especially through the use of open application programming interfaces.
• An overhaul of delivery systems to improve interoperability and the way CMS pays for care to reward quality.
• A culture change with regard to access to information, helping combat data blocking, educating individuals on their rights to access information and reminding providers they're legally allowed to exchange healthcare information when it comes to treatment.

One major step, according to officials, is HL7's FHIR standard to promote and integrate electronic health information exchange. The spec allows providers to transmit patient data to the consumer or an app chosen by the patient.

While ONC found that more providers are exchanging information than in the past, there is still much work to be done.

"Despite progress on standards and economic incentives, many health IT developers, healthcare providers and hospitals still choose not to share electronic health information for a variety of reasons," the report's authors said.

"To achieve the seamless and secure flow of electronic health information, public and private sector efforts must foster culture change around access to information – including combating information blocking – in addition to addressing technical and economic factors," they added.

More specifically, officials said common standards are necessary for successful interoperability, as are innovations at the community level. So too is the elimination of information blocking. ONC is targeting these providers and exploring avenues to fix the problem.

Further, as providers shift toward value-based care, ONC and the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services are collaborating to help state Medicaid agencies have a unified approach for all data systems and programs.

"In the years to come, HHS will continue to work with federal partners, the private sector and Congress to make electronic health information accessible when and where it matters most, to bolster care delivery and coordination, improve the health of individuals and communities, reduce disparities, fuel research and innovation and spur advancements in scientific discovery," according to ONC.

Twitter: @JessieFDavis
Email the writer: jessica.davis@himssmedia.com

Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

Though healthcare did not get the attention during the campaign as many would have hoped, President-elect Donald Trump has already laid out a plan that many feel will cause massive disruption to the industry. His 7-point plan begins with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which could result in the loss of insurance for up to 20 million people.

[Also: Trump will face cybercrisis in first 100 days, Forrester predicts]

Also on his list: Allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines, creating health savings accounts to help pay for coverage, giving people the ability to deduct insurance premium payments from taxes, mandating healthcare price transparency, pushing Medicaid control to the state level and reforming access to pharmaceuticals.

One day after his election, we polled our readership of healthcare managers and clinicians to see what they think the short and long-term effects will be of Trump's policies on the healthcare sector, and we were flooded with responses. While most of them detail the deep concerns industry professionals have, a small few felt the businessman's idea could improve competition and lower costs.

On the other hand, many respondents paint a bleak picture.

Here are nearly 100 of the answers we got, broken down by the titles of the people who shared them with us.

Share your view at our survey: How will Donald Trump's presidency affect healthcare?

Twitter: @HenryPowderly
Contact the author: henry.powderly@himssmedia.com

When Healthcare IT News interviewed the winners of our Best Hospital IT Departments 2016 we also asked them which emerging technologies today have the greatest potential to improve healthcare in the future.

Their answers ranged from analytics to wearables – with chatbots, custom apps, mobile tools, population health platforms, sensing devices, speech recognition and virtual visits also on the list.

"It's the new tech associate: analytics," said Jon Brown, CIO at Mission Health System in Asheville, North Carolina (#5 Super hospital). "Sophisticated algorithms direct care without taking away a provider’s ability to put in judgment and not jeopardize a patient’s privacy and security in the process."

While Brown and Mission are tapping analytics to transition consumer and care process models in new ways, Mahaska Health (#2 Small Hospital) IT director Chris Hickie said population health tools enable value-based care and better decision about how to treat patients.

"Population health software systems and data warehousing are going to be a key technology for all healthcare organizations," Hickie said. "We're generating mounds and mounds of data and have been talking about this for years: meaningful use is enabling us to generate tons of data that will allow us to see this and analyze it and interpret it."

[Also: Post-EHR era: Buzzword or almost here? Best Hospital IT winners weigh in]

Just about any discussion of meaningful use, of course, leads to another emerging technological advancement, albeit one with its share of controversy or at least growing pains, that being interoperability.

In the case of Methodist Le Bonheur (#1 Super Hospital), interoperability is the underpinning for care continuity.

"We’re really focused on exchanging data, not just for meaningful use but in looking for opportunities to improve patient health in the community, including providers who serve underinsured and self-pay patients,” said Gayle Shepherd, director of consumer and physician innovation at Methodist Le Bonheur.

CIO Mark McMath added that the system is also putting considerable stock in Apple iPads, Watches and iPhones. With 90 percent of their doctors using Apple products, Methodist Le Bonheur created an algorithm that sits on top of its Cerner EHR to constantly survey patients and sends physicians an alert to their iPhone when something changes.

Indeed, several CIOs pointed to mobile health wares when asked about emerging technologies with big potential.

"I'm quite optimistic with the direction of mobile devices," said Alex Rodriguez, CIO of St. Elizabeth Healthcare in Kentucky (#4 Large hospital). "Once we can untether our clinicians from desktop units and carts and onto a true mobile platform, we can then obtain the next level of productivity from our nurses and physicians that strengthens the care of our patients."

Lucile Packard Children’s CIO Ed Kopetsky (#3 Super hospital) added wearables and sensing devices as changing the shape of healthcare moving forward.

"Today, almost all of healthcare is still location-based: you've got to come to the hospital or the clinic," Kopetsky explained. "In the future, we're going to be able to discharge patients as if they're in their bed, but on monitoring with a center that can pick up the alerts. Or we can do virtual visits with patients who don't need to come in but just need to show us their symptoms. For our patients, who in particular have long-term needs, this is phenomenal. For diabetes it's going to be a breakthrough.”

Custom apps and standardized interfaces topped the list of Tuality Healthcare CIO Sonney Sapra.

"Making apps specific to each specialty is important in getting the right info to the right doctor at the right time," said Sapra (#1 Medium hospital). "The easier we can make it on them, the better. Speech recognition can take place while a patient is there to get them involved in the documenting process."

And then there is the promise of technologies that teach providers more about patients than many ever thought possible — without the need to involve patients. Take chatbots, for instance.

"The world of the bots is coming," said Inspira Health CIO Tom Pacek (#3 Large hospital). "Chatbots are going to push the envelope of consumerism and help improve care as we can get a better understanding of our population based on what they tell Amazon and Google. The next wave is dealing with data from a social media perspective."

That will mean pulling information from bots and social crawlers into an EHR or database and then running analytics to learn about those patients from what they order.

"We’re going to start to understand why someone has a health condition so we can reach out in a non-threating way to help them deal with health issues in a proactive sense," Pacek said.

Bill Siwicki, Jessica Davis, Mike Miliard and Diana Manos contributed to this report.  

Healthcare IT News' Best Hospital IT Departments 2016: 
⇒ Meet the winners
⇒ CIOs reveal what makes an IT shop great 
⇒Interactive map: Best Hospital IT Departments 
⇒ See the people who make their IT departments winners

Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients (CRISP) said it will use the Verato cloud-based patient matching platform.

CRISP, a not-for-profit regional health information exchange serving Maryland and the District of Columbia, will leverage Verato to determine ambiguous types of patient matches in real time with the aim of helping clinicians provide better care for patients without the need for manually reviewing records, the companies said.

CRISP’s goal is enable its healthcare community to share data in order to provide better care, reduce costs, and improve health outcomes, said CRISP president David Horrocks said.

"The ability to share data relies on our ability to identify the same patient across every provider where they have received care,” Horrocks said in a statement. “For an HIE like CRISP, this patient matching exercise is especially challenging.”

The Verato platform will help CRISP manage identity matching in a more systematic way, according to Verato CEO Mark LaRow.

CRISP joins San Diego Health Connect (SDHC) and Healthix as the third major HIE using Verato to improve its core patient matching capabilities. With the addition of CRISP, the Verato platform is now being used to help match patient identities for nearly 10 percent of the U.S. population.

Healthcare IT News EHR Satisfaction Survey 2016
⇒ Comparison chart: How readers rated their EHR in 2016 vs. 2015
⇒ EHRs getting better? Readers rank them higher than last year
⇒ Health IT executives have a new favorite dirty word 
⇒ EHR interoperability: Ripe for disruption?

Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

Hartford, Connecticut-based Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center has been achieved Stage 7 on HIMSS' Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model.

Specifically, Saint Francis is being recognized for its work driving collaboration between operational staff, IT experts and technology partners to improve internal interoperability in the service of better patient care.

The 617-bed hospital collaborated with two of its vendors to test workflow and data exchange between the technology systems, HIMSS officials say. Its IT team then worked with desktop, server and virtualization professionals to develop the application package necessary to deploy this functionality to all of the reading workstations in a uniform manner.

The teams also developed an application package that would allow for remote echocardiology reads.

"Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center has implemented advanced capabilities that include capturing discrete data into the EMR from the cardiovascular information system and using RFID technology in the pharmacy medication dispensing process for the operating room," said John H. Daniels, global vice president, healthcare advisory services group, HIMSS Analytics, in a statement.

"They are experiencing some phenomenal revenue cycle benefits thanks to their focused attention on IT-enabled process efficiencies," he added.

HIMSS Analytics developed the eight-stage EMR Adoption Model as a way for hospitals to track IT maturity in comparison to other healthcare organizations nationwide. Just 4.6 percent of hospitals in the U.S. have achieved Stage 7

"Achieving EMRAM Stage 7 validates that we are using our technology to provide safer, more efficient, cost-effective and higher quality care for our patients," said Saint Francis President John F. Rodis, MD. "Our unified care transitions and enhanced communication between healthcare providers will result in better care for our patients."

Saint Francis Hospital will be recognized with its Stage 7 Award atHIMSS17, which takes place Feb. 19-23, 2017 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla.

This article is part of our ongoing coverage of HIMSS17. Visit Destination HIMSS17 for previews, reporting live from the show floor and after the conference.

With the 2017 HIMSS Annual Conference & Exhibition here before we know it, here’s a look back at what happened in Las Vegas last year during HIMSS16.

After a day of pre-conference symposia, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell kicked things off Monday evening with a keynote.

Burwell revealed that EHR stalwarts — including Cerner, Epic, Meditech and many others — had taken an interoperability pledge to support standardized APIs. AHIMA, HIMSS, Premier and several other organizations voiced immediate support of the HHS effort. 

When the show floor opened on Tuesday, innovation was everywhere. That lasted all week.

Here’s our comprehensive guide to product and vendor news, including moves by IBM Watson, Epic, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Xerox and dozens of others.

A first: HIMSS held its inaugural Women in Health IT reception and a roundtable discussion. HIMSS executive vice president Carla Smith recaps the discussion:

Our team of a dozen reporters and editors from both Healthcare IT News and its sister site Healthcare Finance live-blogged HIMSS16.

The top takeaways? The interoperability chase continues apace, Epic CEO Judy Faulkner opened up to the media, ONC stoked the FHIR, Mitt Romney told an exclusive HX360 lunch of executives that he was not running for president – but that any Republican would use tax credits to overhaul the Affordable Care Act if elected. Social media, meanwhile, was of course more prevalent than ever, with the optimistic buzz that healthcare will keep getting better and better. The complete summary of HIMSS16 major events. 

For 100 pictures that capture HIMSS16, check out the big gallery: 

As the week drew to a close, Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, fresh from a late season drive to Super Bowl victory, took the stage to end HIMSS16.

Manning’s message: Revolutionizing healthcare is a mighty endeavor. "I've been on the receiving end of your efforts," the five-time MVP said on stage. "I can't even come close to doing what you do." Manning also joked that thanks to the catchy tune in his Nationwide commercials, people do not talk to him anymore. "They jingle to me." 

What are you most looking forward to at HIMSS17 when it takes place Feb. 19-23, 2017 in Orlando? 

This article is part of our ongoing coverage of HIMSS17. Visit Destination HIMSS17 for previews, reporting live from the show floor and after the conference.

At the Radiological Society of North America annual meeting in Chicago on Monday, RSNA – along with interoperability collaboration The Sequoia Project – announced the first seven vendors to successfully complete the RSNA Image Share Validation program.

Agfa Healthcare, AMBRA Health (formerly DICOM Grid), GE Healthcare, Lexmark Healthcare, LifeImage, Inc., Mach7 Technologies and Novarad are the made it through the program, which tests the compliance of vendors' systems to accurately and efficiently exchange medical images.

Launched in 2016, the validation program seeks to spur adoption of image-sharing capabilities by vendors and radiology sites, enabling easier and more widespread access to medical images and reports.

All imaging companies are invited to apply, according to RSNA, which says the Image Share Validation seal shows provider clients that vendors are committed to improving access to images, enabling better and more efficient patient care: allowing for more informed clinical decision-making, reducing redundant radiology procedures – and relieving patients of the responsibility of transporting their own X-rays and mammograms.

"CDs as a means to exchange exams were an improvement on film, but it's time to move to a modern more efficient mechanism, web-based exchange," said David Mendelson, MD, vice chair of radiology IT at New York's Mount Sinai Health System, in a statement. "Safe, secure internet-based image sharing benefits the clinical provider, radiologist and, most importantly, the patient."

"Validation provides a number of benefits to providers and patients," added Mariann Yeager, CEO of The Sequoia Project. "Vendors who achieve the RSNA Image Validation seal are empowering their physicians to more readily exchange medical images with other providers and their patients across multiple technology platforms to enhance quality of care, improve efficiency, and reduce costs."

Another hoped-for benefit, she said, is a "synergy created among the approved vendors to spur standards-based interoperability innovations."

Now that the majority of clinicians and doctors are using electronic health records and other software tools, the next stage is to tap into all the data currently being collected and learn from it to better understand disease and improve care and outcomes.

To that end, the AMDIS/HIMSS Physician’s Executive IT Symposium: Unlocking Value and Embracing Change taking place on Feb. 19, 2017 at HIMSS17 will examine the tools needed to drive healthcare organizations toward the next phase of health technology and medical informatics.  

Topics at the day-long pre-conference symposium include regulatory issues, data security, interoperability, emerging sources of data, patient engagement, personalized medicine and an expert look into the future of healthcare.

Symposium sessions include:

A Changing Healthcare Landscape. As care delivery moves forward in a period of tremendous change, it is important to look back at our path and reflect on how to better affect the future.
Speaker: Dales Sanders, Senior Vice President, Health Catalyst.
Time: 8:15 AM - 9:15 AM

The Science Behind Motivating Change. This session will share the science behind behavior change and provide physicians with tools to help create an impactful patient engagement strategy.
Speaker: Kyra Bobinet, MD, CEO, EngagedIN.
Time: 9:30 AM - 10:30 AM

The Impact of Interoperability on Patient Populations. The health of a population can be affected both positively and negatively by an HIE’s efforts to move data from point A to B. Hear how organizations are improving the health of populations as the result of a HIEs.
Speakers: Micky Tripathi, CEO, Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative, and Larry Garber, MD, Medical Director for Informatics, Reliant Medical Group.
Time: 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM

Putting CMIOs at the Center of Cybersecurity. What does the CMIO need to know in today’s security environment and what is on the horizon? This session will explore the evolving role of the CMIO related to cybersecurity.
Speakers: Daniel Nigrin, MD, CIO, Boston Children’s Hospital
Kevin Johnson, CEO, Secure Ideas.
Time: 12:45 PM - 1:45 PM

Precision Medicine: A New Era of Medicine. Hear from organizations that are working to make precision medicine and pharmacogenomics programs part of their standard of care as they share the goals of their programs and what lessons can be learned.
Speakers: Peter Hulick, MD, Medical Director, Center for Personalized Medicine at Northshore University Health System
Vinod Ravi, MD, Clinical Director, Translational Research Accelerator, Dept. of Genomics, University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Time: 2:00 PM - 03:00 PM.

Preparing for the Next Horizon of Healthcare. Led by physicians who are directly engaged with the care of patients in rapidly changing hospitals and practices, this session will feature a frank discussion about the impact of legislation, regulation, and technology on the care delivery system.
Speaker: Peter Basch, MD, Medical Director, MedStar Health.
Time: 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM

The AMDIS/HIMSS Physician’s Executive IT Symposium: Unlocking Value and Embracing Change is scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017 at the Orange County Convention Center. Cost: $335.

This article is part of our ongoing coverage of HIMSS17. Visit Destination HIMSS17 for previews, reporting live from the show floor and after the conference.

When HIMSS17 kicks off on February 19 in Orlando, attendees should expect population health to be front and center.

For starters, you’ll find the newly created Population Care Management Knowledge Center, located in Booth 6179, Hall D at the Orange County Convention Center. The exhibit will educate visitors on the successful methods needed to implement a care coordination and management program.

HIMSS17 will also host dozens of educational sessions focusing on population health tactics and techniques.

Here they are:

Population Care Management Symposium: Clinical and Business Intelligence Road to Value-Based Care Success
Starting HIMSS17 as part of the pre-education day, this daylong forum will focus on the transition into value-based care and the changes that need to take place in order for organizations to find success. Attendees will learn how clinical and business intelligence combined with data strategies can support population health management challenges. Symposium highlights: How Well Do You Know Your Patient’s Health Risk and How To Manage It?; Do You Know What it Really Costs to Deliver Care? How to Optimize Value & Outcomes; and Building an Effective Dashboard: What Does the Customer Want? What can Clinical and Business Intelligence Provide?

Speakers include: Stan Huff, MD, CMIO, Intermountain Healthcare
Gowtham Rao, MD, CMIO Bluecross BlueShield of South Carolina
Charles Boicey, Clearsense CIO
When: February 19, 8AM - 4:30 PM
Where: Room 311A

Care Coordination Transformation: Road to Population Health
Executives from John Muir Health and The Chartis Group will discuss how John Muir’s care coordination transformation project - using actionable data integrated within the EHR - redefined the organization’s workflows, reduced data duplication and increased efficiencies to connect patients to the right provider.
Speakers: Christy Kaplan, vice president of care coordination and integration at John Muir Health
Susan Tolin, ​manager at Chartis Group
When: Feb. 21, 1 PM
Where: Room 304A

A Universal Operating Model for Population Health Management
Population health implementation and daily operations are a work in progress. The CMO of US Medical Management, will discuss how a Triple-Aim operating model combined with process design, engineering, human factors and management can create a successful population health infrastructure.
Speakers: Steven Merahn, MD, Chief Medical Officer, US Medical Management
When: Feb. 20, 12 PM
Where: Room 303A

Using Data Science to Influence Population Health
This session is designed to help nurses understand how use and analyze large data sets to improve patient outcomes.
Speaker: Karen Monsen, associate professor of the University of Minnesota’s School of Nursing
When: February 19, 10:45 AM
Where: Hall F3

IT-Enabling Population Health: A Journey, Not a Destination
Providence Health & Services used population health and informatics to address the growing revenue tied to at-risk contracts and manage population health data coordination. Attendees will learn the importance of governance structure and current state assessments to support population health management.
Speakers: Lisa Rawlins, vice president, Providence St. Joseph Health
Randy Thomas, managing director of value realization solutions, Encore
When: February 22, 1PM
Where: Room 331A

Using EHRs and Case Management to Improve Patient Care and Population Health
SwedishAmerican Medical Group executives will talk about how clinical data analytics helped improve care from chronically-ill patients over the course of four years and prevented hospitalizations in high-risk patients.
Speakers: Thomas Schiller, president, SwedishAmerican Medical Group
Jennifer Kuroda, quality improvement manager, SwedishAmerican Medical Group
When: February 22, 4PM
Where: Room 331A

The Impact of Interoperability on Patient Populations
Attendees will learn about the benefits and challenges of interoperability on population health and some of the barriers to effective Health Information Exchanges, which are crucial for interoperability and more relevant and cost-effective care for patient populations.
Speakers: Micky Tripathi, CEO, Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative
Larry Garber, MD, medical director for informatics, Reliant Medical Group
When: February 19, 10:45 AM
Where: Regency Ballroom R

Developing a ‘Need-Based’ Population Management System
Doylestown Health executives will talk about their organization’s use of existing talent and resources for the development of a successful population analytics infrastructure - in use for five years.
Speakers: Richard Lang, CIO, Doylestown Health
Tim Hediger, director of data analytics, Doylestown Health
When: February 21, 2:30PM
Where: Room 207C

Improving Outcomes, Efficiencies and Engagement with PGHD
Attendees will learn how patient-generated health data is critical as the healthcare industry shifts into value-based care. The speakers will highlight how to successfully navigate new patient and provider demands, regulations and shift into new payment models.
Speakers: Jodi Daniel, partner at Crowell & Moring
Drew Schiller, Validic co-founder, CEO
When: February 21, 11:30AM
Where:  Room 307A

Using Social Determinants of Health to Power Risk Contracts
Executives from UMass Memorial Health System and Mediquire will discuss how both providers and payers can use an analytical companion diagnostic integrated with social determinants to generate more personalized care.
Speakers: Jennifer Daley, MD, former COO of UMass Memorial Health System
Klaus Koenigshausen, CEO, Mediquire
When: February 20, 10:30AM
Where: Room 207C

This article is part of our ongoing coverage of HIMSS17. Visit Destination HIMSS17 for previews, reporting live from the show floor and after the conference.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the long-awaited 21st Century Cures Act on Wednesday by a vote of 392 to 26. It will now head to the Senate for further debate, before it makes it to the President's desk.

The bill, the largest healthcare-focused legislation since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, contains $6.3 billion in provisions that will fund federal agencies as they work to speed the arrival of diagnostic tools and disease therapies, improve mental health treatment and bolster the fight against the ongoing opioid crisis.

Notably, it would provide the National Institutes of Health with $4.8 billion to help advance President Barack Obama's Precision Medicine Initiative (aimed at driving technology-enabled personalized medicine), the "Cancer Moonshot" spearheaded by Vice President Joe Biden and Obama's BRAIN initiative, which is meant to improve understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer's and dementia.

[Commentary: Trump must respect the value of health IT as U.S. President]

Specific to health IT, the Cures bill has provisions concerning the use and regulation of EHRs.

"The development of new drugs and devices is meaningless unless they are delivered to the right patients at the right time," according to a House statement. "Cures will help improve delivery by: ensuring electronic health record systems are interoperable for seamless patient care and help fully realize the benefits of a learning health care system.

The bill aims to create a reporting system to tap into stakeholder opinions about EHR usability, interoperability and security; drive better interoperability by, among other things, setting up a provider directory to facilitate data exchange and favoring exchange standards developed in the private sector.

Cures would take aim at several policy changes, such as combining ONC's Health IT Policy and Standards Advisory Committees, giving authority for HHS's Office of the Inspector General to investigate and penalize information blocking and requiring HHS to educate providers about data  sharing misunderstandings that could be hindering better interoperability.

"Setting interoperability standards, and requiring free and secure health IT exchange among disparate assets will improve patient care, reduce costs and unlock data silos in healthcare," said Blair Childs, senior vice president of public affairs at Premier, in a statement.

The White House, meanwhile,  lauded the bill for taking steps to "improve mental health, including provisions that build on the work of the President's Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Parity Task Force. "Like all comprehensive legislation, the bill is not perfect. But the legislation offers advances in health that far outweigh these concerns."

The bill would disburse $1 billion to states to fight opioid abuse, and give an additional $500 million to the FDA to do the same on a national level.

But despite the wide margin of approval, some of the bill's provisions – especially the deregulation of the FDA's approval process, have drawn criticism.

Some opponents, such as the nonprofit Public Citizen, called the act a "threat to FDA standards." The provision has been also opposed by Democrats such as Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont.

[Also: Lobbyists in frenzy ahead of 21st Century Cures Act vote]

"For more than two years, Congress has been working on legislation to help advance medical innovation in the United States," Warren said November 28. But "this final deal has only a tiny fig leaf of funding for NIH and for the opioid crisis. And most of that fig leaf isn't even real. … Most of the money won't really be there unless future Congresses pass future bills in future years to spend those dollars."

Sanders opposed the lack of provisions to combat rising drug prices and the inclusion of "corporate giveaways that will make drug companies even richer," he said in a statement. He also opposed the $1 billion cuts to Medicare and Medicaid funding.

Despite those objections, however, the large margin of the bipartisan House vote suggests the bill will pass the Senate.

For its supporters, the bill provides needed relief for medical research, product development and support to the mental health system.

"It can take more than ten years and $2 billion for new drugs and other therapies to get to market," said Janet Marchibroda, director of health innovation at the Bipartisan Policy Center, in a statement. "This new legislation will help accelerate the discovery, development, and delivery of life-saving, safe, and effective cures for patients."

House Chief Deputy Whip Patrick McHenry, R-North Carolina, said in a statement that the bill is a bipartisan effort "aimed at improving the lives of Americans" afflicted by disease, and said the House vote "provides hope more cures are within reach."

"The real winners today are American families whose lives stand to be improved by the Cures legislation," said Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, co-sponsor of the bill. "This bipartisan legislation … will help us take advantage of the breathtaking advances in biomedical research and bring those innovations to doctors' offices and patients' medicine cabinets around the country."

Twitter: @JessieFDavis
Email the writer: jessica.davis@himssmedia.com

Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

Shafiq Rab is taking the position of chief information officer and senior vice president at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

He will leave Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack, N.J., where he has served as CIO and senior vice president of information technology since 2012.

Rush University executives announced their pick for the post after a comprehensive national search. Rab’s first day on the job is set for Jan. 9, 2017.

Michael Dandorph, president of Rush University Medical Center, said Rab’s extensive professional experience combined with his unique medical and public health background is a perfect fit with Rush University.

At Hackensack, Rab has employed technology to help grow a single 775-bed hospital into the largest health system in New Jersey, with more than 3,500 patient beds. He also introduced innovations and tools including bedside iPads and the Apple Health Kit, to give patients and families greater access to their medical records and to more easily communicate with their care teams.

[See also: How one hospital boosted care transitions.]

Moreover, Dandorph noted that Rab’s work at Hackensack led to improved patient outcomes and experience, and also operational efficiencies and taking the organization to the leading edge of mobile health care technology by developing an app that allows patient access to direct appointment scheduling, test results, prescription information and communication with physicians from any device. His team also developed facial recognition technology to accurately match and identify patients with their data.

As Dandorph sees it, as Rush continues to expand, Rab will help Rush use information technologies in creative new ways.

From 2008 to 2012, Rab was vice president and CIO at Greater Hudson Valley Health System in New York, where he led the system’s successful implementation of electronic medical records software. Before that he was vice president and CIO at St. Mary’s Hospital in Passaic, New Jersey, and CIO/director of information technology/information security officer at Carrier Clinic, East Mountain Hospital in Belle Mead, N.J.

Rab has a Master of Public Health degree from Rutgers University, and a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degree from Dow Medical College in Pakistan, where he completed a residency in internal medicine. He also is a certified healthcare chief information officer by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives – CHIME. He has received numerous awards and recognitions and sits on several corporate and industry governing boards.

Rab received the 2015 Innovator of the Year Award from CHIME. The award recognizes people who are at the forefront of adopting technology solutions aimed at arming clinicians and patients with information that can help them make better decisions, as well as reduce healthcare costs.

Chicago-based Rush Health will adopt the InterSystems HealthShare interoperability platform for collaborative care coordination – a platform that will make it possible for the health system to roll out a private health information exchange.

The HIE will provide the hospital, physicians and affiliate members a complete view of their patient records across the care continuum from within their electronic health record,

The technology connects primary, specialty, sub-acute and hospital-based providers, as well as other HIEs regardless of the EHR system.

HealthShare will serve as the health system’s health information hub, making it possible for all stakeholders to use their own EHR systems to exchange information and get the most complete medical picture for each patient.

Rush Health includes four hospitals, more than 1,100 physician members and 350 non-physician network clinicians. HealthShare will give providers complete visibility into all of their patients’ medications, tests and procedures, which will help reduce unnecessary prescriptions and treatments and deliver better care.

“Implementation of our HIE is critical to Rush Health’s transition to value-based care, Rush Health CEO Brent Estes said in a statement. “It will serve as the hub for all care coordination activities, triggered by real-time monitoring of quality, resource use and cost. It will fill in any gaps in our members’ EHRs.”

, Rush Health’s clinical leaders cited HealthShare’s proven ability to access all data –  not just HL7 information – with an integrated analytics toolset that enables actionable insights at the point of care.

HealthShare also features an alert and notification system capabilities for clinical events across Rush’s integrated network, as well as an integrated enterprise master patient index to ensure consistent identification of patients across external and internal medical record systems.

As Rush Health executives see it, simply exchanging healthcare records is not enough to impact the quality or cost of care delivery. Clinicians need to access all the patient data to fully understand what is happening with a patient and drive clinical actions at the point of care.

The CommonWell Health Alliance and Carequality announced December 13 they will be collaborating on efforts to boost data sharing among healthcare providers nationwide, committing to work together on advancing interoperability.

The goal is to increase health IT connectivity and offer more inormation sharing options for hospitals and physician practices, officials said.

To understand the collaboration, it helps to think of CommonWell as a network – much like a telephone service provider, and to think of CareQuality, which works under the Sequoia Project, as providing the framework – the rules of the road. Both are critical for data sharing.

The goal of the collaboration is to give providers easier access to more health information, when a healthcare provider is making a diagnostic or treatment decision, for example, and needs access to key medical information.

Here are the main elements of the collaboration, outlined by Carequality and Commonwell executives:

• CommonWell will become a Carequality implementer on behalf of its members and their clients, enabling CommonWell subscribers to engage in health information exchange through directed queries with any Carequality participant.
• Carequality will work with CommonWell to make a Carequality-compliant version of the CommonWell record locator service available to any provider organization participating in Carequality.
• CommonWell and The Sequoia Project, the non-profit parent under which Carequality operates, have agreed to these initial connectivity efforts and will explore additional collaboration opportunities in the future.
• The agreement between CommonWell and Carequality resulted from yearlong discussions between the two entities on how to improve connectivity, data sharing and collaboration, Yeager said.

"There was always collaborative dialogue in terms of how we wanted this work to come together," Mariann Yaeger, who heads the Sequoia Project, the parent of Carequality, told Healthcare IT News.

"But, the efforts were really in formative stages early on, and it grew to a point where once there was traction, momentum that it was time to figure out how to get these activities interconnected,"  she added.

[Also: Carequality says athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, Epic, NextGen, Surescripts now exchanging data via Interoperability Framework]

"To achieve nationwide interoperability that truly improves patient care, two things are required:  collaboration across the healthcare industry and the will to take real action," said Jitin Asnaani, executive director of CommonWell Health Alliance.

"Our vision has always been for a patient's health data to follow him/her regardless of where care occurs, and in turn give providers and caregivers increased access to critical health data when and where it is needed," he said.

Dave Cassel, director of Carequality, agreed. "Collaboration and inclusion are the keys to success in health data sharing and interoperability," he said. "Collaboration and inclusion are the keys to success in health data sharing and interoperability."

"We are glad to see so many organizations joining the Carequality community and participating in standards-based interoperability at a national scale," Epic President Carl Dvorak said in a written response to Healthcare IT News' request for a comment on the Care Quality-CommonWell collaboration.

On its website, Carequality has posted detailed answers to anticipated questions, definitions of terms and details about collaboration and membership.

Read the FAQs and responses here.

Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com

Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn