Morning Headlines 5/22/15
Cures Act heads to House floor
The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the 21st Century Cures Act with a unanimous 51-0 vote, sending the legislation to the House floor for a vote. The new law would require EHR vendors to meet yet to be defined interoperability standards by 2018 or risk being decertified.
“I will not stop until we have the right to see our own information” – Part 2 –2015
Regina Holiday and a group of fellow patient advocates held a “paint-in” protest in front of HHS to protest the decision to reduce the MU2 view/download/transmit requirement from from five percent of discharged patients to just a single patient, calling the deprioritization a “slap in the face to patient rights.”
Lahey Health exec sheds light on reasons for layoffs
Lahey Health (MA) announces that it has laid off 130 people, or one percent of its workforce due to both the unusually brutal winter in New England this year, and also the $160 million Epic implementation, which together resulted in a $21 million operating loss for the first six months of 2015.
HIStalk is getting more and more like F@ckedCompany every day … HIT is dead. Long live HIT!
One week after Epic went live at Lahey, I had to make a trip to ED with my child. Realizing they were newly live, and my first-hand knowlege of Lahey’s past system implementation boondoggles…I chose to go to the ED 10 miles further. I would have expected long waits and confused staff. At other hospital we were treated quickly and in/out in just over an hour (after dinner time). Guess I hurt their bottom line…oooops… Knowing they won’t even order a dying patient blood before gathering demographics in the system…I’d never consider going there. What happened to the Jane/John Doe workflow, is that antiquated (I’ve been out of ED workflow loop for awhile)?
How in the WORLD does a harsh New England winter impact a medical center financially? People still get sick. Ambulances still roll up (if not more than usual in bad weather. Sounds pretty lame to me. And, for the record, I live nearby, and it was not a great winter, but we have had many bad winters here.