Tuesday, November 15, 2011

AMA Says Stop the Implementation of ICD-10 For Now–Figurehead Executives With No Hands On IT Experience Think Complicated IT Miracles Are Possible Today..Huh?

This is what you have today with executives that have no “hands on” IT experience and think that CIOs and others can magically make all of this happen.  I research and post about this all the time and I see what is happening and once upon a time a few years ago I coded and wrote an EMR, thus understand data structures and the layers necessary.  Figurehead executives, don’t get it and fall into the digitally illiterate groups and have to rely on what others tell the, they become Health IT magpies sadly with unrealistic goals.  Things are changing out there today and rapidly and folks with this limited background don’t get it, and worse they don’t listen.  How many times was meaningful use changed and some of the provisions stalled?  It has to be that way to physically be able to do all of this with the data for goodness sakes. 

Shoot they don’t even listen to Harvard any more…see this link below…and this comes from Dr. Halamka, the #1 Health IT guy in the US…nope we know better and we can push this…push and you get a crash.  Again being in a spot with an executive position without ever having written a stick of code really puts executives at a big disadvantage.  This post was from August of this year…nope…nobody listened as they are the “magpies” that know better..right! 

Dr. Halamka Speaks About Health IT–“CIOs are on Overload” and It Would be A Blessing to Stall Off ICD-10 to 2016 - The Straw Breaking the Camel’s Back

If you need further proof, we already ran off our US CIO a while back and have a new one now, but geez…listen to what these folks say.  I am working on some data projects myself and I have to tell people “no” and extend time frames as data “platforms” are developing and changing. Code still needs to be written and modified and humans still do that last I looked. If you think you can get anything you want out there with formats and data, you better think again as to how much CIOs and others in Health IT can juggle at once because you are burning them up. 

Vivek Kundra-US CIO To Resign And Take Fellowship at Harvard-Was He OverTaxed And Burnt Out, If So That is Allowed Today As This A True Reality for CIOs All Over the US

Why is it harder in the US for ICD 10 implementation – we are the only country that ties the coding to reimbursement.  This means a ton more money for subsidiaries of insurance companies to cash in bigger.  Nobody pays much attention to all their technology subsidiaries today but they are big and many. 

ICD-10 One of the Largest, Most Expensive and Riskiest Health IT Translations–Other Countries Use ICD Codes, But US Is the Only Country Using Codes For Reimbursement

We get dumber yet too with HHS and their Facebook application for disasters…geeks have laughed all over this one on the web..how do you talk HIPAA and Facebook in the same sentence?  Duh?  Again, nothing personal but figureheads with no “hands on” experience lead to dumb decisions like this.

HHS Seems To Be Confused on Social Networks–Facebook for Disaster Support Contest, Give Me a Break Use Twitter Like Everyone Else Does

Insurers though like United Healthcare are ready to jump in and profit to sell you more software though.  They just started a clearinghouse business to compete with other clearinghouse businesses…read up. Pay attention to the large daisy chains of subsidiaries that are out there today.  Look at who they partnered with, Epic who is in house at Kaiser, Stanford, Cedar Sinai and so on.  Get into the math as these folks if you go back in history short paid out of network payments for 15 years and lawsuits are still out there in numbers over this. 

OptumInsight (A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of United HealthCare Optum Division) Creates Medical Clearinghouse Integrated With Epic Practice Management Software-Subsidiary Watch

Again read up on all of this to understand where your dollars go and what is physically capable with CIOs and Health IT departments and hopefully soon we may luck out and get some real “hands on” folks in places to where they can put some logic in place here instead of those who believe all the numbers tossed at them with being gullible and naïve. Numbers don’t lie but people do and have you been spun by the spin doctors of late?  Good question to ask sometimes.  Buy and read professor Siefe’s book, it’s a good one and listen to the radio interview at the link below, it will get you on the reality track pretty quickly. BD 

“Numbers Don’t Lie, But People Do”–Radio Interview from Charles Siefe–Journalists Take Note, He Addresses How Marketing And Bogus Statistics Are Sources of Problems That Mislead the Public & Government

Stop the Implementation of ICD-10
The AMA House of Delegates voted today to work vigorously to stop implementation of ICD-10 (The International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th Revision), a new code set for medical diagnoses. ICD-10 has about 69,000 codes and will replace the 14,000 ICD-9 diagnosis codes currently in use.

"The implementation of ICD-10 will create significant burdens on the practice of medicine with no direct benefit to individual patients' care," said Peter W. Carmel, M.D., AMA president. At a time when we are working to get the best value possible for our health care dollar, this massive and expensive undertaking will add administrative expense and create unnecessary workflow disruptions. The timing could not be worse as many physicians are working to implement electronic health records into their practices. We will continue working to help physicians keep their focus where it should be – on their patients."

http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/news/news/2011-11-15-ama-adopts-new-policies.page

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