At Intermountain Healthcare, however,  they’re hoping to change this state of affairs. The Salt Lake City-based health system of 22 hospitals and 185 clinics is launching what the Wall Street Journal says is the first major effort to measure and report patients’ cumulative radiation exposure.

Intermountain’s effort is focused on the tests that produce the highest amount of radiation, including CT scans, nuclear medicine scans and interventional radiology exams of the heart, the WSJ reports.  As part of an effort to educate clinicians and patients about medical radiation, both will be able to access data on patient exposure levels through Intermountain’s EMR.

The idea behind listing a patient’s radiation exposure is to encourage both clinician and patient to consider the risks and benefits of a particular test and at times, avoid the test if the needed information can be obtained with a radiation-free test, the WSJ piece says.

In a typical year, Intermountain’s patients receive 220,000 CT scans and radiology procedures, so data that helps patient and doctor consider alternatives could conceivably have a meaningful effect, clinicians there say.

Intermountain is not the only hospital system to focus on tracking radiation doses. For example, Hospital Corporation of America, the largest for-profit hospital system, is kicking off a new “Radiation Right” campaign tracking patient doses, the newspaper reports. But it does seem to be the only chain sharing the data with patients via an EMR.

Realistically, these efforts are still in their infancy, as researchers don’t know how much of a cumulative dose of radiation directly increases cancer risk. Still, this does seem like an excellent use of the EMR as a collaborative tool engaging patients in making better-informed health decisions.

How many times have we hear doctors say, “I’ve got a stack of paper charts I have to finish.”? Or the phrase, “I’m drowning in charting.” It happened all the time even in the paper chart world. Why else would a doctor take a stack of paper charts home with them in their car. It wasn’t for some light reading at night. It was so they could catch up on their paper charting (yes, some took them home for their hospital rounds too).

Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying that we should give inefficient and poorly designed EMR software a pass. Absolutely not! I am saying that far too many people forget how inefficient paper could be and how the charting and documentation requirements took a lot of time before EMR as well.

In my EHR benefits series, I wrote about the efficiency benefits of Legible Notes and Accessible Charts. I’ve heard many doctors talk about how templates help make them more efficient when it comes to charting. I know many doctors who can touch type so quickly that they can’t imagine writing a paper chart anymore. I know many doctors who use a scribe and see amazing efficiency with charting.

On the other side, I know some who hate their EMR. Their EMR is so slow that they can barely chart in it. They get overwhelmed by the clicks. They spend hours trying to find the right diagnosis or code or template. They have stacks of EMR charts waiting for them to finish charting.

The reality is that you can paint the EMR picture either way. I’ve seen both sides of the story happen many times. However, far too many who ridicule the inefficiencies of EMR seem to forget the inefficiency of paper.

USA Today: Incentives Push Doctors To Electronic Medical Records
More than half of doctors' offices and 80 percent of hospitals that provide Medicare or Medicaid will have electronic health records by the end of the year, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Wednesday (Kennedy, 5/22).

CQ HealthBeat: HHS Report Shows Strong Growth In Use Of Electronic Health Records
More than half of all doctors now get Medicare or Medicaid incentive payments for using electronic health records, according to a report federal officials released on Wednesday. But Republicans say medical professionals should not just use the records in their own offices but also should exchange them with other providers (Adams, 5/22).

The Associated Press: Pentagon To Seek New Records System For Vets Health Care, Says It Won’t Solve Claims Backlog
The Pentagon has decided to buy a new computerized health records system to be able to better share and merge its data with the Department of Veterans Affairs, but officials cautioned that it was part of a “long-term modernization” effort and would not help ease the backlog in VA disability claims (5/22).

California Healthline: San Francisco Leading The Way In Health Data Applications
The city of San Francisco is leading the way in using health data in innovative ways and it's paying off in a big way, according to several city officials who spoke yesterday at the Healthy Communities Data Summit. The summit was held in San Francisco and that meant a number of success stories were local, but the conference cast a wide net in its approach to innovation prompted by public release of health data (Gorn, 5/22).

As my blogs have grown and the industry has changed (when I started people didn’t even know what a blog was), I’ve been working to evolve with the industry. While display advertising still does quite well for me and my advertisers, there are a number of shifts happening in healthcare marketing. That’s why I launched Influential Networks, an EHR Job board, EMR and EHR whitepapers, email blasts, and a number of other projects I’m still working to officially launch like my EHR and Health IT video series.

There’s a lot happening when it comes to healthcare marketing, and next week as part of my EHR and Health IT interview series, I’m going to be doing an interview with Don Seamons from Lumeno Marketing and Shahid Shah from Influential Networks. More details on that to come, but it should be a really interesting conversation on the changing healthcare marketing landscape.

With everything I do, my goal is to provide value to everyone involved. For example, those reading the site get value from the free content that’s available to them and also get introduced to companies they may not have known about otherwise. Those companies that advertise benefit from exposure to people reading the content we create. I don’t always nail this perfectly, but I’m sincere in my efforts to provide value all around. Plus, whenever there’s a financial interest involved in something I’m doing, I try to make that clear to the reader. That way everyone knows any bias I may have and can make their own judgement on the content I provide.

With all of this in mind, I want to take a second recognize the new and renewing EMR & HIPAA advertisers.

ZH Healthcare – As most of you know, my blog run on the backs of many open source software products. So, I’m really glad to have an open source EMR company supporting EMR and HIPAA. ZH Healthcare is built on the back of the most successful ambulatory EHR software to date, OpenEMR. If you want the flexibility of an open source EHR, check them out.

Caristix – I love the tagline from their ad, “HL7 interfacing 50% faster.” I think that pretty much describes what Caristix offers to those in healthcare IT. HL7 is going to be with us for a long time to come, so every institution and company should know a great HL7 company. Check out Caristix if you’re looking to do some HL7 integrations.

Chetu – Rather than me trying to describe Chetu, check out this interview I did with Craig Schmidt from Chetu. You can see the breadth of experience they have developing software for healthcare. If you’re looking to outsource some IT development work, check out Chetu.

Renewing Advertisers
The heart and soul of our support is in our renewing advertisers. So, a big thanks to all of the companies listed below for renewing their ads with us. It’s great to look over so many of these companies who have been supporting us for so many years. Here’s to many more years working together. If you enjoy what we do here at EMR and HIPAA, check out the advertisers below and see if they offer something you’re looking for.
Ambir – Advertising since 1/2010
Amazing Charts – Advertising since 5/2011
simplifyMD – Advertising since 9/2012
Canon – Advertising since 10/2012

A number of other exciting things coming in the future. Thanks to all the readers and supporters of EMR and HIPAA.

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened its investigation after ISU notified HHS that the ePHI of approximately 17,500 individuals was accessible at its Pocatello Family Medicine Clinic because an ISU server firewall was disabled. OCR investigators found that ISU did not apply proper security measures and policies to address risks to ePHI and did not have in place procedures for routine review of information system activity which could have detected the breach in the firewall much sooner. Overall, ISU failed to ensure the uniform implementation of required Security Rule protections at each of its covered clinics.

The Press Release can be found on the HHS News page: http://www.hhs.gov/news/ and the Resolution Agreement can be found on the OCR website at http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/enforcement/examples/isu-agreement.html.

The following video embed is from an interview I did with Sean Benson and Andre L’Heureux from Wolters Kluwer Health. We had a great discussion about the gap or white space between EMR software and what clinicians want them to do. We also talked about the challenge of integrating EMR with CDS systems. Plus, I asked them what EMR vendors could do to make the Smart EMR of the future possible. Their answer was quite interesting. We also discussed the challenge hospitals face of clinical knowledge management in their organization. Then, we wrapped up the conversation with a look at the WKH Innovation Lab’s sepsis project.

I think there’s a lot to be excited for when it comes to creating smart EHR and getting the most from clinical decision support systems. Enjoy the Smart EMR and CDS video interview embedded below.