Next week on Maria's List -- an Interview with Joseph Ng, Mather's new CMIO

Later this week I'll be calling on Dr. Joseph Ng, the new Chief Medical Informatics Officer.  If you have any questions you'd like me to ask Dr. Ng, please post them under "Comments" below.  I was thinking of asking him about his interest in Medical Informatics, what an Intensivist is doing chairing a Palliative Care committee, or what it's like to work for Joan Faro, but perhaps you have some better questions...

New and Improved -- the Mather Physicians' Forum

Plans are underway, and the web-development elves are hard at work on a "Physicians-Only" website that will be more timely, interactive, and user-friendly than our current Mather Physician's Portal.  Some of the components that you and I have requested that we hope will make our new site the website of choice for Mather Physicians for finding out what's going on at Mather and among our medical colleagues include:

1. Forums - an area where we physicians can interact, sharing what's on our minds, asking those burning open-ended questions, and providing countless hours of witty repartee meant to enlighten, amuse, and inform ourselves and each other as only we can!
2. Groups - formed around particular interests (Medicare, managed care, politics, medical informatics) or by department; a location where groups can share information such as links, documents, photos, jokes.
3. Profiles - new office location?  better email address?  this part of the site will house contact information that we can input or revise at any time.
4. News and Resource Center - at first this will be administrative and other Mather-related info, likely curated by Mather's talented and willing medical staff office, or the "Physician Engagement Team," or fed by syndication from sources like Medscape, New England Journal of Medicine, or MSSNY.  Ultimately, I envision we may compile, cull, and contribute the most pertinent "news" ourselves, but I guess we'll see.  Maybe we can put some of our "Medical Staff Library" here.

So...what do you think?  Once built, I hope you understand, that you ARE the pilot group of users for this site.  The initial roll out is planned for medical staff leadership, the medical board, department and section leaders, and members of the physician advisory council for Eclipsys.  We will all be in charge of the fine tuning, template design, customization, and initial use and evaluation.

Don't worry, it will be fun!  Like "Facebook," but just for us.  Click on "Comments" below to let me know if you are on board with this.  Leave me any suggestions that I can bring to meetings with the website developers, and let me know if there is anything I haven't mentioned that you would like to see on our new site (like Linked-In or Twitter...whatever that is!).

"Stunningly Basic -- " Can checklists prevent infection?

JT Mather Medical Staff President, Lloyd Lense, read this recent Washington Post article and has passed it along to Mather administration and Medical Staff Leadership to review.  I believe he would like to discuss it at the next Quality Management committee meeting and the next joint medical board meeting in September.  Thought you might be interested as well, so here is the link  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/12/AR2010071204893.html?referrer=emailarticle .

The article refers to a "stunningly basic" five-step checklist which may help reduce catheter-related bloodstream infections (CRBSI's) which goes something like this:

1. wash hands with soap
2. clean patient's skin with an effective antiseptic
3. put sterile drapes over entire patient
4. wear a sterile mask, hat, gown and gloves
5. put a sterile dressing over the catheter site

Simple, right?  Stunningly basic, no doubt.  So why don't we use checklists like these?  Please click on "Comments," below to share your thoughts.  First five comments win a prize (see sidebar for details).

What is a CMIO, anyway?

In this job description from The Informatics Review, a Chief Medical Informatics Officer is

Responsible for supporting the development of clinical information systems that assist clinicians in the delivery of patient care in the conduct of research. Participates as a member of the IT Services Steering Committee in representing the needs and requirements of the physician community and serves as an advocate of management in promoting the use of information technology in the clinical setting. Works in partnership with Information Technology Services (ITS) Design and Implementation Teams to translate clinician requirements into specifications for new clinical and research systems.

Read the rest of the reponsibilities, education and training, and special skills required of this newest member of "the C-Suite" here...

Are You Eligible? Who can be a Meaningful User?

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, aka the Stimulus money, Obamabucks, or the reason Old Town Road has been torn up and repaved in the past two weeks, has authorized the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to provide financial incentives to eligible professionals (EP's) and hospitals that demonstrate "meaningful use" of certified electronic health record (EHR) technology.

In general, an eligible professional can demonstrate meaningful use of EHR in his or her practice if he

1. Uses a certified EHR technology.
2. Demonstrates electronic exchange of specific information.
3. Reports on specific clinical quality measures.

But are you eligible?  Probably.  Under the Medicare program, you are eligible if your practice is non-hospital based, and you are an

• MD or DO
• DDS
• Doctor of optometry
• Chiropractor
• Podiatrist

You may even find yourself eligible under guidelines for EP's to the Medicaid-based incentive, which includes non-hospital based physicians, dentists, certified nurse midwives, nurse practitioners, and certain physician assistants who work out of Federally qualified centers and rural health centers that are run by physician assistants.  If you are eligible for both, you must select one program under which to receive your benefits, and you can only switch programs once during the 2012-2014 payment years.

Eclipsys Update... Order Sets are Here

Let the building begin!  A collection of order sets has arrived, and the Clinical Information System "Build Teams," have been organized.  Committees of scores of Mather employers and leadership are preparing for a "Kick-off" in late September, early October, and were informed that some of them may expect to spend some 15 - 26 hours a week in workgroups.

Dr. Faro is tentatively planning our next meeting of the Physician Advisory Council for Thursday, August 19th  (time to be determined).  We will be discussing a new, interactive, physician-only website which this team will be using to do our own work on order sets and work flow.  Check back with Maria's List for further details, but if you just can't wait, email me at maria.basile.md@gmail.com or mbasile@matherhospital.com.

Government Resources for Understanding Meaningful Use

So, good luck with this one... HealthIT.gov (the US Dept of Health and Human Services) has released its new version of their website designed to help physicians, other providers, and patients make sense of meaningful use.

If you have ever been on the Medicare website, this one is very similar...text heavy, and not much fun.  But if you are looking for the resources for Meaningful Use, straight from the horse's mouth, click on these links:

• Press Release:  Secretary Sebelius Announces Final Rules to Support Meaningful Use
• CMS Meaningful Use Information
• Standards and Certification Fact Sheet

Access to the .pdf files can also be downloaded from this site, but they are large files, so take a breath, be patient, and plant a couple of trees before you start!

The Physician Advisory Council to Mather's Clinical Information Transition

Speaking of Lists, here are the members of our Council:

• Arif Ahmad
• Dan Baram
• Maria Basile
• Joe Boglia
• Peter Bruno
• Joan Faro
• Lorraine Farrell
• Mike Fracchia
• Paul Fritz
• Yakub Gangat
• Keith Harris
• Dan Kass
• Arthur Klein
• Kara Kvilekval
• Lloyd Lense
• Fred Matlin
• Joe Ng
• Phil Nizza
• Samar Raza
• Sanjay Sangwan
• Kevin Schiller
• Randy Schrager
• David Shenouda
• Stanley Ostrow

If you know someone on or off the List who hasn't heard about this newsletter, this committee, or this project, and you think they should, or if you either don't see your name on this list and want to get involved, or are wondering how you even got here and what you can do to get out, please email me at Maria.Basile.MD@gmail.com .  Please let your friends and colleagues know about our website here at www.checklistMD.blogspot.com .