An interoperability fund launched by the Physicians Foundation will support medical practices in engaging in HIE use and transitioning to value-based care.
The Physicians Foundation recently started an interoperability fund as part of an effort to improve health information exchange use among medical practices across six states.
The foundation is working in association with six state medical societies, including the Connecticut State Medical Society, the Medical Association of Georgia, Louisiana State Medical Society, the Missouri State Medical Society, the Medical Society of New Jersey, and the South Carolina Medical Association.
The fund will help medical practices effectively leverage HIEs to engage in health data exchange with other physicians and hospitals. Physician practices in any participating state with an EHR system already in place are eligible for funding.
Want to publish your own articles on DistilINFO Publications?
Send us an email, we will get in touch with you.
“Our national survey of physicians tells us EHRs are the least satisfying part of physicians’ jobs, and oftentimes, a leading factor in burnout among America’s physicians,” said Gary Price, M.D, president of The Physicians Foundation.
“The Physicians Foundation is proud to lead an initiative that will help alleviate unnecessary burdens on both physicians and patients,” added Price. “Through improved information sharing, The Physicians Foundation Interoperability Fund will further enable physicians to be their patients’ strongest advocate and partner in decision-making for their care.”
All six medical associations part of the initiative will collaborate on a physician-led program to improve health data exchange and care quality. The program will maintain a central focus on ensuring physician independence in today’s digitized healthcare environment.
The program will also be designed to support the patient-provider relationship while ensuring physicians have access to timely clinical data for improved quality of care, health disparity identification, healthcare transparency, and healthcare access.
HIE participants will have the ability to access and share patient data from any location as part of the initiative. The interoperability fund will launch with about $500,000 in funding. Interested physician practices in participating states will receive funding on a first-come, first-serve basis.
The physicians foundation is a nonprofit organization centered on advancing the work of practicing physicians through grants, research, white papers, and policy studies. Since its inception in 2005, the foundation has helped to drive improvements in physician leadership, physician wellness, physician practice trends, and healthcare reform.
Ensuring physicians are able to share critical patient health information in a timely manner will help to improve patient health outcomes, reduce clinical inefficiency, and improve patient safety in participating states.
In 2018, seven medical societies including the South Carolina Medical Association, the Medical Society of New Jersey, the Medical Association of Georgia, the Connecticut State Medical Society, and the Missouri State Medical Society launched an initiative to ensure medical practices part of physician-led HIEs have access to an opioid and controlled substance health IT tool.
The opioid and controlled substance health IT tool is designed to promote safer prescribing practices.
KAMMCO released a dashboard to all HIEs within its network to ensure physician practices, hospitals, and behavioral health providers can more effectively use and access prescription drug monitoring program data.
“The KAMMCO tool builds upon a more comprehensive set of data than the PDMP, which only captures filled prescription data, and does not include medications which are administered to patients in healthcare facilities,” said KAMMCO Senior Vice President Laura McCrary.
“The new dashboard provides participating clinicians with the list of opioids/controlled substances prescribed or administered to a clinician’s patients even before a prescription is filled at the pharmacy,” McCrary added.
The KAMMCO Analytics and Business Intelligence team worked with a multi-disciplinary group of practicing physicians to develop the analytics tool.
Date: May 17, 2019
Source: EHR Intelligence