Physician Advisory Council Next Meetings

Work for Mather Hospital's Sunrise Clinical Manager Physician Advisory Council continued through January with weekly Future State Design and Physician-oriented meetings.  Recently, CMIO Joseph Ng had this to say about the work this group is doing...

Today’s meeting went very well in my opinion. It gave everyone a chance to discuss their concerns in some part as well as talk about what they would like to see as part of the system. As I have said before, rest assured I AM taking notes.

The Next meeting will be on Tuesday the 25^th of January at 8AM-12PM. I don’t expect the meeting to go on for that long, but I wanted to have that time reserved just in case. Once again, the format of this meeting will be to allow questions as well as comments. I will be sending out this weekend, a list order sets that I have been tasked to build; as well list order sets that are currently on paper. My hope is that prior to the meeting can have an idea as to which of these order sets are superfluous, in which of these order sets are must haves.

Once again, I would like to thank you all for your continuing support for this long and complicated endeavor. I hope that for the next couple of meetings (which I think are the last few) all of you will be able to attend.

Please expect an e-mail from me this weekend providing more details.

Joseph Ng, MD

Office of the CMIO

John T. Mather Memorial Hospital

Please check the tab above for the updated list of Physician Advisory Council meetings.  And click HERE for a slideshow from recent meetings.

MSSNY Blasts Off EHR Meaningful Use Education Sessions

"What Doctors and Office Managers Need to Know to Collect Available Money From Incentive Programs In 2011,"  is the title of a 5 hour educational dinner meeting being held at the Huntington Hilton on Tuesday, February 8 from 3-5pm, and repeated on Wednesday, February 9 at the New York Academy of Medicine.  This, from their flyer:

The impact of “meaningful use” and the federal 

incentive programs on the physician community is 

enormous. Physicians will play a critical role in achieving 

the intended goals to reduce medical errors, promote 

patient safety, coordination of care and improve 

quality outcomes by adopting “certified” electronic 

medical record technology. This program was designed 

to provide physicians with the necessary information 

to incorporate technology into their practices and 

how to access available funding for the transition. 

 Start the New Year on the right track. Register now for an educational program offered by the Medical
Society of the State of New York. Listen to speakers from New York State Medicaid, Centers for
Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and MSSNY HIT faculty. SEATING IS LIMITED. REGISTER TODAY!  Register HERE for HUNTINGTON, or HERE for NYC.

Registering for the ARRA/EHR Incentive Program, or How I Spent My Snow-Day

Note my newest list of links on the sidebar, designed to help you navigate your way to "Meaningful Use" of your office electronic health record, and more importantly to connect you with the $44,000 of "stimulus money" set aside for each Eligible Professional (EP) who demonstrates meaningful use of his or her EHR.

Perhaps you've read here before how to determine if you are an Eligible Provider.  If you're still not sure if you're an EP or whether you qualify for incentives under the Medicare or Medicaid-based program, click here.

For Step 2, "Register for EHR incentive program,"  the Center for medicare and medicaid services has set up a completely online registration and attestation process.  Tricky, though, you need to have the User ID and password that you created when you first got your (scary organ music) NPI number.

Luckily, you've used this User ID and password recently, maybe even changed your password (you can NEVER change your User ID) or modified some of your profile data ...you remember, when you signed up for or made sure you were enrolled in PECOS!

The good news is there is a great guide to go page-by page, even click-by-click through the registration process on the CMSwebsite, which is turning out to be quite a resource to obtain information about the EHR incentive programs.

Registration began on January 3, 2011, and CMS reported 4,000 registrants in the first four days.  You don't need to have your EHR's certification number (although it is available here if your EHR is certified by the Office of the National Coordinator), you don't even have to have an electronic health record yet to register.   It is expected that many of us are in varying stages of adoption, implementation, and meaningful use of electronic health records, but registration as an eligible provider is just one of the steps you can take now to qualify for ARRA payments.  So why not sign up today?  

Physician Advisory Council Next Meeting -- Documentation 1/13/2011

At this point in Mather's Sunrise Clinical Manager build, decisions must be made regarding Physician Documentation.  This Thursday at 7am-9am is the next meeting of the Physician Advisory Council.  Here's a quick note from CMIO Dr. Joe Ng:

(Click here for the whole slide show.)

Good Morning everyone. Thank You all for attending the last meeting. I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to make the last meeting but from what I gathered on the phone there were a lot of issues that were raised and some that were solved. This week we will continue on with our design and purposing of physician documentation. I am attaching the Thursday meeting’s powerpoint presentation so that you can peruse it at your leisure, but in summary, we will be demonstrating the forms that we have for physician documentation. We will also have an open forum after both meetings (this and next on documentation) as to how we will use these tools during the first phase of this project. I have also spent some time on looking up medicare guidelines for organ system documentations on physical exams and ROS so that when we click NORMAL on any organ system, we will have what we need to have a properly documented note.

I hope to see you all at this Thursday’s meeting at 7am-9AM at the Sunrise Room#3.

Joseph Ng, MD

Office of the CMIO

John T. Mather Memorial Hospital

Mather Physician Advisors Continue SCM Future State Design

Seven members of Mather's Physician Advisory Council for implementation of Sunrise Clinical Manager met with members of Mather Clinical Leadership and Future State Design Teams as well as Project Manager Mike Gwardyak, of get vITalized, and design specialists from Eclipsys/Allscripts on Thursday morning to discuss the workflow involved in the DISCHARGE PROCESS.  The discussion was very thoughtful and productive.  Issues that were hashed out and analyzed (not necessarily resolved) included:

• Discharge orders and Discharge order sets
• Discharge planning
• Discharge summaries
• Prescriptions for medicines to be taken at home and Durable Medical Equipment
• Prescriptions and nursing homes in an electronic world
• Home care and ongoing care and follow up
• Patient education
• Printing up the "chart"
• Accessing the record post discharge

The entire Physician's Advisory Council and other interested members of the medical staff are strongly encouraged to attend the next two Thursday morning sessions, Jan 13, and Jan 20 from 7-9 am in the Sunrise Room (3rd Floor, opposite Old Pharmacy), which will focus completely on Physician Documentation.  See how our lives can change...could it be...no more dictating Discharge Summaries?  What about Op notes?  Admission notes?  Consults?  Find out first with the Physician Advisory Council!

Quarterly Medical Staff Meeting Pushed Back One Week

PLEASE NOTE DATE CHANGE

THE JOINT QUARTERLY MEDICAL STAFF MEETING WILL BE HELD:

MONDAY, JANUARY 17, 2011

7:00 P.M.

MATHER HOSPITAL

CONFERENCE ROOMS 3, 4 &5

HITECH Meaningful Use Reporting Begins and $$$ Disbursed in Two States

Wednesday, the first payments under the Medicaid EHR Incentive Program were issued by Oklahoma and Kentucky. Kentucky processed payment to the University of Kentucky‘s teaching hospital, University of Kentucky Healthcare. The first payment, $2.86 million, was one-third of the hospital’s overall expected amount for participating in the program. Oklahoma issued payments to two physicians at the Gastorf Family Clinic of Durant, OK, for $21,250 each, for having adopted certified electronic health records (EHRs). These incentive payments for the adoption of certified EHR technology are federally-funded under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Select for additional information on the this action by Oklahoma and Kentucky. For more information on the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Records Incentive Programs, please visit CMS‘ EHR website.