by
Lauren Dubinsky, Senior Reporter | April 23, 2015
From the April 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
They are also shortening the EHR reporting period for 2015 to 90 days to make it easier for people to select a more likely time throughout the year when they can effectively make the changes they need to in a safe way, so that they can meet the requirements. One of the things that really can help meet the requirements is to think about this in terms of change management. Instead of chasing just meaningful use requirements, it helps to look at this in a large context of organizational change.
It gives you a bigger picture, and if you start to see meaningful use as a component of much larger changes that are occurring over a longer period of time, it can make it a lot easier to figure out how to actually work it into your strategies and tactics for the coming years.
James Whitfill: The meaningful use challenges around stage 2 are really intense. MU has done one thing incredibly well — the level of EMR adoption has skyrocketed in the U.S. in the last six years. However, MU has had one terrible unforeseen effect — the amount of vendor work going in to meet the MU requirements has crowded out all other development around usability and safety. This is nearing a crisis level and I have never seen so many medical societies unified in their voice on a topic as I am seeing around MU and patient safety.
HCBN: With all of these data security breaches cropping up recently, what are you doing to prevent that happening at your hospital?
Sue Schade, chief information officer at the University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers: I recently engaged an independent security expert to do an assessment knowing we needed to strengthen our overall IT security program. We have a set of recommendations that we are now working through.
No surprises — like many organizations, strengthening our ability to deal with remote attacks, including phishing and malware, ensuring all devices are encrypted, developing a stronger security culture, increasing awareness of security threats amongst our workforce, and having adequate staffing to support the IT security function.
Edward Babakanian: We have many layers of security from preventative firewalls to protecting systems through encryption. Information that is critical to patient care is accessed only by people who are authorized to use it. We also have systems in place that detect abnormal conditions and we have people who immediately look at that. If there is a probe coming into our environment, we can very quickly shut that down electronically to make sure that unauthorized people can’t get in.
