Healthcare Usability

Cloud storage service Box is diving deeper into the healthcare space. Recently the company shared that it has added 10 new healthcare application partners to its platform to help respond to industry-specific challenges. In addition, to further gain acceptance by companies in this space, Box is sharing that it is now both HIPAA and HITECH compliant and is signing Business Associate Agreements with its customers.

CMS recently published a final rule that specifies the Stage 2 criteria that eligible professionals (EPs), eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals (CAHs) must meet in order to continue to participate in the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs.

This is going to create a large amount of new jobs. EHR vendors will be looking for Healthcare IT professionals with an understanding and experience with the meaningful use requirements.

Some time last month, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) quietly filled its long-vacant Director of Healthcare Initiatives position, responding to a call made last September by its mHealth task force. The FCC’s appointee, Matthew Quinn, is no stranger to healthcare innovation. With a background in two previous government agencies and a number of large and small healthcare companies, Quinn brings a range of experience to the role. It’s recently been announced that one of his first duties will be to advise an HHS workgroup on mobile health regulation.

More than 50,000 healthcare IT jobs have sprouted since passing the HITECH Act, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates they’ll grow by 20 percent from 2008 to 2018 – much faster than all remaining US occupations per industry. A Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report reflecting the doubling of EHR adoption among physicians in two years from 17 to 34 percent. The rate of adoption among primary care doctors also increased significantly, from 20 to 39 percent.

Usability is often blamed by physicians' as the root cause of their dissatisfaction with their electronic health record systems (EHRs)

Some of the usability issues will be addressed in stage 2 of the meaningful use incentive program.

During that stage, usability will be made part of the certification process. Vendors must go through formal usability evaluations in order to have their products approved as complying with meaningful use.

They should be also looking for usability help, not outside engineering-centric developers!

EHR vendors: Contact Us!

Electronic health record (EHR) companies are beginning to partner with outside software developers to help them ramp up new applications for care management, population health management and patient engagement. Athenahealth, Allscripts, and eClinicalWorks (eCW) all are placing big bets on this approach, although eCW is tilting more toward mobile health apps than the other two vendors are.

Improved efficiency was one promise that proponents of electronic health record systems often touted to physicians to persuade them to adopt the systems. But many doctors have found the only way they can accomplish certain tasks in a reasonable amount of time is to do them on paper.

Medical News reported the results of a report from the American College of Physicians indicating “satisfaction and usability ratings for certified electronic health records (EHRs) have decreased since 2010 among clinicians across a range of indicators.” The announcement was made at the 2013 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Conference & Exhibition. According to Michael S.

The usability of health and other information technology systems has long been a challenge.

And there are a number of common misconceptions as to why the problem persists, according to Nancy Staggers, RN, a professor of Informatics at the University of Maryland’s School of Nursing, and Lorraine Chapman, Director of Use Experience Research at Macadamian Technologies, a user experience design and software development firm that does work in the health care field.