Thursday, May 21, 2009

AMA Webinar: Stimulus 101



During my lunch break today, I attended the live AMA (American Medical Association) webinar titled, "Stimulus 101: Basics of the Health Information Technology Provisions"

The presenters were:
  • Glen Tullman, CEO, Allscripts
  • Margaret Garikes, Director of Federal Affairs, AMA
And the webinar was described as:
  • Understand the HIT provisions in the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009" (ARRA) and receive the latest update on the HIT Policy and Standards Committees.
If I could summarize several key points that struck out to me, they would be:
  1. We're still all waiting for the definition of "meaningful use." (what a surprise, right?)
  2. An EHR (electronic health record) system that is not currently CCHIT certified is unlikely to qualify under ARRA.
  3. If you're currently using a non-CCHIT certified EHR, contact your vendor to evaluate whether they plan to update (or completely rebuild) their system to qualify.
  4. People are confused about whether the Medicare/Medicaid PQRI (Physician Quality Reporting Initiative) measures and e-prescribing incentives are related to the incentives described in the ARRA. (right now, they appear to be completely separate initiatives)
Care to listen to the archived webinar? Click here.

1 comment:

  1. Did Glen Tullman tell the physicians that they should take out loans to buy his product just so they would also "have some skin in the game"

    He's been known to make such bonehead remarks.

    D. Kellus Pruitt

    ReplyDelete