Had she been alive today, today would have been the 101st birthday of actress Ann Sothern. A quick glance at her acting credits includes appearances in dozens of movies and her own situation comedy that ran for three seasons across an acting career that spanned nearly six decades.

You may ask why I’ve opened a blog that deals with medical billing, coding, compliance and health information with a short biography of an old actress. Please bear with me for a few paragraphs.

There is one credit on Ann Sothern’s resume that sticks out in my mind and is relevant to today’s dissertation. In 1965, Ms. Sothern played the voice of a dead woman in a television show that most critics now point to as one of the worst shows in the history of television. That show was My Mother, The Car. The show followed the exploits of a young man who one day buys an antique automobile from a used car lot. When he turns on the radio in the car, who should be on the radio but his dead mother offering life advice from beyond the grave. Mercifully, this show only lasted one season and to my great glee is not available on DVD.

As we stand back and look at this plot line, we begin to wonder not only why such an atrocious idea ever made it to air, but what person, when this idea was pitched to them, thought that something like this would appeal to the viewing public. Worse yet, the young man in the show was played by Jerry Van Dyke, whose entrance onto the American entertainment landscape acts as the ultimate symbol of what happens when we let a talented person’s less gifted siblings share a piece of the spotlight.

I brought forward the example of My Mother, The Car to illustrate that no matter what the quality, all any idea really needs is a benefactor; someone who hears an idea and states “I think that’s great! Let’s run with it”.

Which brings me to the proposed rule defining “meaningful use” of electronic health records (EHR) that was released on December 31st by CMS. In early 2009,when it was announced that physicians would receive incentive payments for the meaningful use of EHR in mid-2011, there was much excitement that a new day was dawning in the way our health care infrastructure managed and shared patient medical information.  Before meaningful use was defined, the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) created a certification for EHR systems that would meet the standard. Some systems gained CCHIT certification prior to the release of the proposed rule, which I pointed to in an earlier post as premature. 

Since the proposed rule listing 24 specific requirements needed to meet meaningful use was released on the last day of 2009, many practices who took the plunge and purchased an EHR prior to a clear definition of what was needed to meet the standard are experiencing buyer’s remorse, realizing that a large investment has been made for systems that may not meet the standards if the proposed rule is implemented as written.

The requirements demonstrate high ideals of treatment and public health. An example of this is the idea of EHR’s being able to share important patient condition information with immunization registries and public health agencies. Under this proposed requirement, at least one test must be performed to assess the EHR’s ability to provide electronic lab results to a public health agency. We heard a lot about interoperability when the discussion of meaningful use began in earnest last year, but a requirement such as this can only work if the relevant public health agencies have the ability to receive the information electronically.

Also put forth is the proposal that any certified EHR system be able to provide patients with an electronic copy of their health information upon request. The key word in that phrase is “electronic”. While some more sophisticated EHR systems and larger health care institutions now have this capability, this requirement places a large privacy and security burden on smaller practices that lack the IT infrastructure support to create a secure electronic pathway from the office to the patient.  

It is the intersection of high ideals and the execution of the same that presents itself as a formidable challenge to any idea. Between now and the release of the final rule, which is expected sometime after March of this year. I encourage those that have yet to purchase an EHR system, and even those who have implemented an EHR in their practice believing it would meet any standard, to review the proposed rule. If these requirements outlast scrutiny and become final, this may someday be seen as an idea that slowly took on a life of its own, consuming everything in its path until it was too late. This would be similar to the thought all those years ago that a dead mother talking to her son through a car radio would be appealing to a wide audience.

Tags: coding / CPT codes / medical billing
10:15 am, January 22nd, 2010 |