SMARTDC Monthly Newsletter- A Timely Summary of Your IT News

SMARTDC™ Releases Rounds Mobile App | Date: 02/10/2011

Fort Lauderdale, FL., February 10, 2011– SMARTDC™ Corporation announced today the release of a new mobile app for the iPad, iPhone and Android, SMARTDC Rounds™.

“SMARTDC™ Rounds was designed in response to requests by our customers for a more efficient way to capture and submit charges when performing rounds at the hospital or nursing homes. Many were jotting notes on index cards that they would hand off to their biller once a week so the charges could be submitted. Claims could be even further delayed if a key piece of information was missing.” stated SMARTDC™ President, Nandip Kothari . “Using a mobile app to capture charges allows billing staff to review and submit charges instantly to shorten the reimbursement cycle.”

The SMARTDC™ Rounds mobile app can be used as a self-contained, stand alone product or as an integrated part of SMARTDC™ Clinician Desktop, an Electronic Health Records solution. SMARTDC™ Rounds is the fastest and easiest way to capture charges from SMARTDC Rounds and nursing home visits and provides immediate benefits to practitioners:

• Streamline charge capture and shorten your billing cycle
• Never be without critical medical information to aid in your decisions
• Effortlessly share essential patient history with covering physicians

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Come see us at the following conventions and experience a demonstration of our EHR 3.1 Clinician Desktop:

Florida Chiropractic Association Spring Convention, March 17-20th 2011 at the Hyatt Regency Riverfront, Jacksonville , Florida.

Registrants for federal EHR incentives continues to grow

Fourteen thousand providers have now registered for meaningful use incentives, David Blumenthal, MD, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, told members of the HIT Policy Committee on Wednesday. This is up from the 13,000 announced in January. Blumenthal told the members of the HIT Policy Committee that the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and its advisory committees will have more time in planning the meaningful use of EHRs for State 2 than they did for Stage 1.

Blumenthal also said “interoperability” will be key to the success of the program and the federal government is "working hard" on it. He was pleased ONC was announcing on Wednesday the launch of two interoperability projects as part of the "Direct Project" pilot.

Blumenthal said ONC will work on pushing the simplest interoperability as an option at first. He said ONC is considering setting a target for Stage 2 that would take into account what is achievable using secure email.

Senate Votes against a Repeal of the Healthcare Reform

To nobody's surprise, the Senate voted against a repeal of the healthcare reform law in a 47-51 vote that followed party lines, the Washington Post reports. The vote came Wednesday, two weeks after the House GOP voted 245-189 to repeal the law, according to  The Hill 's Healthwatch blog.

Although the possibility of an outright repeal is remote, because Democrats control the Senate and President Obama would be sure to use his veto power if necessary, Republicans will continue to push to dismantle parts of the reform, bit by bit, the Christian Science Monitor reports. Should those votes fall through, Democrats are on record after yesterday's vote, which could be used against them in the 2012 elections.

In related news, the Senate voted to repeal part of the President Obama's healthcare reform, Politico reports. The amendment to delete the IRS 1099 reporting requirement, an unpopular part of the law that required businesses to report annual purchases of goods and services of more than $600, passed in an 81-17 vote with broad bipartisan support. Last week in his State of the Union speech, Obama identified it as something that needed fixing.

The American Medical Association praised the Senate vote to kill the reporting requirement, saying in a press release, that the provision would have placed an unnecessary burden on physician practices.

Report: 80% of Internet Users Seek Online Health Information

Looking up health information is the third most common online activity among U.S. Internet users, with eight out of 10 Internet users reporting doing so, according to a new report released on Tuesday, the Washington Post reports (Szokan, Washington Post , 2/1). The report is the result of collaboration between the Pew Internet Project and the California HealthCare Foundation.

Key Findings:

Among Internet users who go online for health information:

• 48% said they search for online health information on behalf of someone else;
• 36% said they use the Internet to look up health information for themselves; and
• 11% said they search for online health information for themselves and for others.

In addition, researchers noted that the five most popular types of health-related Web searches are for information on:

• Specific diseases or medical problems;
• Medical treatments or procedures;
• Physicians or other medical professionals;
• Hospitals or other health care facilities; and
• Health insurance (Drake, " Poll Watch ," Politics Daily , 2/1).

Referral silence irks specialists, primary care doctors alike

Sometimes, referring patients can feel like sending them into the abyss.

Primary care physicians may wait and wait for word about how the referral went, but no information comes their way. Likewise, specialists may greet a new patient in the exam room with no patient history or reason for the visit provided by the referring doctor. Poor communication between primary care physicians and specialists on referrals and consultations is an all-too-common problem that has real repercussions on patient care, experts say. It can lead to duplicate lab tests, repeat procedures, wasted time and resources, conflicting prescriptions, and potential harm to patients.

"This is a big problem," said internist Redonda Miller, MD, associate professor of medicine and vice president for medical affairs at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore . "If you ask physicians at Johns Hopkins who refer patients ... their No. 1 concern is they won't hear anything back."

The same is true of physicians nationwide, according to a study in the Jan. 10 Archives of Internal Medicine . Researchers surveyed 4,720 doctors and found a wide chasm between primary care physicians' and specialists' perceptions of how frequently they send and receive information on patients for referrals and consultations.

Primary care physicians spend an average of 10 to 18 minutes with each patient.

Though 69.3% of primary care physicians said they send specialists notification of a patient's history and the reason for the consultation all or most of the time, just 34.8% of specialists said they routinely receive such information, according to the study.

Meanwhile, 80.6% of specialists say they send consultation results to the referring physician all or most of the time, but only 62.2% of primary care physicians say they ever get that information. "Communication goes both ways," Dr. Miller said. Previous research yielded similar results. An October 2006 Pediatrics study, for example, found that specialists reported receiving communication from referring primary care physicians in 50% of cases. Primary care doctors said they had communication with specialists after 84% of initial consultations.

In a survey of 4,720 doctors nationwide, researchers found vast differences in perceptions among primary care physicians and specialists regarding how frequently they send and receive information about patients in referrals and consultations. Here is how physicians responded to the following statement: "Not getting timely reports from other physicians is a problem limiting my ability to provide high-quality care."

Source: "Referral and Consultation Communication between Primary Care and Specialist Physicians," Archives of Internal Medicine , Jan. 10 ( archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/171/1/56/ )