Big News in the World of Medical Informatics

Medical informatics can be described as the application or use of information technology to assist in resolution of various medical issues. Since technology is rapidly changing, it makes sense that the face of medical informatics would be changing rapidly as well. Researchers and practitioners now have access to more information than ever before, and at least one research institution has recognized this fact and is doing something about it.

The University of Missouri at Kansas City recently brought on Mark Hoffman to work with and expand the scope of the University’s Center for Health Insights. The Center’s main goal is to better understand and use informatics in a variety of research settings and clinical medical settings. Hoffman was formerly the vice president of Cerner Corporation  and is expected to bring much knowledge and expertise to the university and to the informatics field in general.

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Cerner Corp and Children’s National Health System Join Forces

Cerner Corp recently announced that it will be joining forces with Children’s National Health System of Washington D.C. The reason for this new  partnership is both exciting and intriguing: the two organizations will be working together to create the United States’ very first institute devoted to childhood health informatics.

The two groups already have a name for their new institution—the Bear Institute, which they will form and develop over the next seven years. The groups say that they wish to use health informatics technologies to offer better pediatric care, to perform research, and to education pediatricians and other childhood healthcare practitioners.

While there are many exciting things in the works for the Bear Institute, some of the more innovative ideas from the organizations include making decision support systems more effective by linking them with genomic profiles, linking general information about patients with relevant clinical trials, and allowing patients more control over their own health and healthcare experiences through secure programs that utilize web portals.

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Medical Informatics Inc. and Health Tech Hatch Launch Funding Project

Medical Informatics, Inc. has long been known as a company devoted to creating technological products

that focus on helping patients by improving their experiences with healthcare professionals. Likewise, Health Tech Hatch is well known in the community as an entrepreneurial source for those who create products and offer services related to the healthcare industry.

Recently, the two organizations have joined forces to launch a funding project on the fundraising site, Indiegogo. Medical Informatics, Inc. and Health Tech Hatch have labeled their effort as “One Patient, One Number, One Card,” and describe it as a way to create a unified health records database from medical providers around the globe. If successful, the funds raised would be used to create easy identifiers for patients via new technological formats. Patients using the planned service would be able to see their health records whenever they wanted via smart phones, tablets, laptops, and other mobile devices.

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Seeking a Degree in Health Informatics?

Health informatics is an excellent field to go into, but, unfortunately, not many colleges in the United States offer educational programs in the field. Fortunately for those in the Washington area, however, two local colleges have recently teamed up to offer a new educational program. Clark College and Bellevue College are now jointly offering a bachelor’s degree in this exciting field; degrees can even be earned online for those not local to the area.  

Health informatics, for those still learning about and/or considering the field involves managing healthcare records, and these days most of that “management” involves the use of sophisticated technology. Many professionals in the industry are also responsible for working with and managing computer information systems at healthcare facilities.

Students who pursue this course of study, either through the Clark College/Bellevue College program or through another program, are likely to be in high demand upon graduation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that there will be a 21% growth in terms of the need for health informatics professionals by 2020. 

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Positive Changes in Store at OHSU

Oregon Health and Science University's Department of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology has decided to make some positive changes to enable it to conduct more research and education efforts in the health informatics field. The Department recently partnered with Epic Systems Corporation in order to gain use of its very helpful electronic health records tool, as well as other tools offered by the organization. This might seem like a small step, but it's actually quite big when you consider the fact that Oregon Health and Science University is the very first academic informatics program that has partnered with Epic.

Both organizations have similar goals for the partnership and for improvement of heath informatics related endeavors. The main goals, both organizations state, are to make the use and processing of electronic health records more practical and efficient and to enable people to learn more about medical informatics and the healthcare field in general more easily. To further advance these purposes, two laboratories have been placed on the school's campus; one of the labs is devoted strictly to research, while the other is designed for education. With such major efforts being made by the school, the partnership is all set to be an effective, mutually beneficial one.

If you are a healthcare clinician, are you using todays new healthcare app, DeductorMD?

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How Many Error Claims were Made Last Year?

American Medical Association (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The American Medical Association recently released results from its study, conducted last year, of medical claims errors. The study found that, in 2013 alone, a massive 7% of medical claims contained some kind of error, and many of these errors cost the patients to which the bills were addressed money.

The new coding system is predicted to cause the percentage of error claims to rise even higher in the coming years, as healthcare professionals get used to the new medical informatics coding system.

With patients being warned so regularly and so fervently about the possible rise in errors, it’s really important to be on top of your game when it comes to the billing and coding process. Fortunately, that’s not as hard to do as you might think, even when the time comes to switch to the new coding system. Medical informatics professionals are advised to take advantage of useful apps, such as DeductorMD.com, that make billing and coding much easier processes.

If you are a healthcare clinician, are you using todays new healthcare app for Medical Decision Making, DeductorMD?

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Mistakes Matter

According to a recent report from Fox Business, as many as eight out of every ten hospital bills contains some kind of a mistake! When you consider how “advanced” and “infallible” medical informatics professionals are supposed to be, that’s pretty shocking.

With figures as high as that, you should never just assume that your own medical informatics team is

foolproof. In fact, you or someone you trust should be double-checking each and every bill before it gets sent out.

The main error found on medical bills, Fox reports, is duplicate charges. A good practice is to flag any bill with duplicate charges and to take just a little extra time to make sure those charges are actually legitimate. You’ll save your clients a lot of hassle and ensure your business keeps its good name.

For more help with billing—because the easier billing is, the less likely it is that mistakes will happen—check out the app for Medical Decision Making at DeductorMD.com.

If you are a healthcare clinician, are you using todays new healthcare app for Medical Decision Making, DeductorMD?

Are you ready for ICD-10

Most medical informatics professionals are already aware that, like it or not, the ICD-10 will replace the ICD-9 as the standard medical coding system. While some people are refusing to think about the new MedPage Today recently released a list of tips to help healthcare professionals prepare for the big transition.

 system until the time comes, others are wisely seeking out tips and advice on how to best adapt to this new system. Even

One of the tips on the list was to consider which codes you use the most often. Once you know the codes that you will need regularly, accessing them and staying on top of how you use them becomes a whole lot easier.

Plus, you can seek help from quality apps that will assist you in all aspects of medical informatics and medical billing, such as the new app available from DeductorMD.com.

If you are a healthcare clinician, are you using todays new healthcare app for Medical Decision Making, DeductorMD?

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What Counts as a Plan of Care?

The world of medical informatics can be tricky. For example, physicians are often called upon to write physician’s notes and plans of care. However, there’s a very fine line between these two different things. Include one thing in your note, and you’ve suddenly got a plan of care. Leave one thing out, and you only have a physician’s note. In order to make sure you’re actually creating what you want to create, it’s important to be able to distinguish between the two.

In order to be considered a plan of care, the physician’s note must include: 

l  Clinical decisions about treatment

l  Diagnosis

l  Long-term treatment goals

l  Type and frequency of services

l  Medications

l  Tests

Without one or any of these things, a note is just a note. Tread carefully to ensure you only establish a plan of care when you actually mean to.

If you are a healthcare clinician, are you using todays new healthcare app for Medical Decision Making, DeductorMD?

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Engage Medical Owner Pleads Guilty

If you enjoy staying abreast of the latest health informatics news, then you’ve probably heard about Engage Medical. Just in case you haven’t, Engage Medical was a medical billing firm owned by a man named Sanjay Puri. The firm, Puri, and three of the firm’s clients were recently accused of purposefully overbilling patients for nuclear stress tests.

While Puri is still denying the claims stacked against him, he has agreed to pay a whopping $3.3 million fine!

Whether Puri is lying or telling the truth isn’t what matters. What matters is that, whether through poor

practices or simple human error, any health informatics professional could end up in some serious trouble, just like Puri.

You already know the importance of being an honest, scrupulous person, but remember to be a meticulous one as well. Be careful with all of your billing and have everything checked and double-checked. You can even use an app like DeductorMD to assist you and make the billing process easier and more error-proof.

If you are a healthcare clinician, are you using todays new healthcare app for Medical Decision Making, DeductorMD?

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