LTPAC HIT Summit: A growing harmony between HIT and clinical

In my May blog I outlined 10 HIT (health information technology) strategies to becoming a preferred provider. We had reached Stage 4: HIT Infrastructure Due Diligence. If you are following this plan you probably need more time to complete your due diligence. I will postpone covering Stage 5: HIT Clinical Design, until next month’s blog.

What I want to discuss with you here is the successful 2012 LTPAC HIT Summit, presented by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), that was held last month in Baltimore. This was the 8^thSummit and it was the most successful summit held to date. There were over 300 attendees that were made up of IT vendors, LTPAC (long-term post-acute care) providers, as well as staff representatives from the ONC (Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology), CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) and other government agencies and LTPAC associations. The keynote address was given by Judy Murphy, RN, Deputy ONC. Judy stressed the value of the HITECH Act and how ONC appreciated the support given to the program by LTPAC. To obtain acopy of the final agenda and copies of the majority of the presentations on the AHIMA website, cllick here. Username: LTPAC12. Password: LTPAC12.

Topics covered included: 30 day re-hospitalization, eQuality measures, how to choose a clinical application, future technologies in care at home, meaningful use and more information just for LTPAC. You can use a great deal of the material from the summit in your HIT strategic plan. You will also note on the last slide of each presentation that the person has provided their contact information. Feel free to contact these HIT thought leaders if you have questions or you want them to expand on their subject. There are great slides in the presentation that you can use to justify HIT expenditures to support your HIT strategic plan. 

In the interoperable showcase attendees were able to discuss with actual providers how they had progressed to have interoperability with hospital partners. 

It was very apparent that many providers have recognized that there is a harmonizing between HIT and clinical. Clinicians are working with their IT departments and vendors to solve clinical processes. Nurses are learning informatics and hospitals are appointing Chief Medical Informatics Officers (CMIO). If you have not formed this partnership within your company you should do so as you will have an earlier success in developing your HIT infrastructure. The advantage to your patients will be a higher level of care. 

Also, the 2012-2014 LTPAC HIT Roadmap was released at the summit. This is the third revision of the LTPAC HIT Roadmap. You can find a copy at www.ltpachealthit.org. After its release the roadmat received a great deal of coverage from Long-Term Living and over 20 more press releases which provided LTPAC a large spike in exposure of our HIT goals. The Roadmap is in harmony with the ONC 2012 – 2014 strategic plan. 

To finish off a wonderful LTPAC week, myself and an ONC staff member gave a 45-minute presentation to the Federal Advisory Committee on HIT Standards. It was commented by members of the Standards Committee that LTPAC providers and vendors should be members of the HITECH Act and even though there are no incentives for LTPAC we (ONC) have to find ways to include this valuable provider sector. 

July will see more meetings with ONC, and a NQF HITAC Committee meeting where we will learn about the NQF MAP LTPAC quality initiatives. Also, the first draft of the LTPAC roundtable held in May has been written and now is being reviewed. Please try and keep up-to-date on our progress. One way is to visit the S&I Framework website. 

John Derr

John Derr, RPh, currently serves as Health Information Technology Strategy consultant to Golden Living, where he previously served as CIO and CTO. He is currently on the HHS Federal Advisory Committee on Standards, a CCHIT Trustee, and serves on several other federal and state HIT advisory groups. His extensive career has included major executive positions with Squibb, Siemens, Tenet (NME) and AHCA/NCAL. With almost 50 years of experience in healthcare, Derr has also started four companies.