eHealth collaborative brings health information technology home

Bringing health IT home

Bringing health IT home

[Download the podcast]

Five years before the federal government launched the HITECH program to encourage adoption of electronic health records, the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative (MAeHC) was already busy wiring up three communities in Massachusetts. In the years since, MAeHC has transformed itself into a non-profit professional services company that supports implementation and optimization of EHRs and health information exchanges, while also helping customers leverage data and analytics.

Now MAeHC is turning its attention to home care, a sector that did not qualify for federal IT support dollars under HITECH. Home care agencies as a whole are behind other providers in IT adoption, although there are certain areas such as remote access where they are ahead. There’s pressure now for home care to catch up, since it’s a crucial part of the accountable care and bundled payments experience.

In this podcast, MAeHC CEO Micky Tripathi and I discuss the following topics:

• (0:12) What is the MAeHC? What have you been up to for the past couple years since we last spoke?
• (4:03) What are some of the remaining challenges in health IT?
• (8:48) MAeHC has focused mostly on physicians and hospitals. You have a new announcement with the Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts. What’s the objective?
• (11:20) What is MAeHC’s role in this?
• (13:33) Home care is coming up now since they didn’t benefit from HITECH. But how much has to do with the growth of post-acute care and the need for integration of home care with ACOs?
• (15:26) What is the current state of the art for health IT in home care? How does that compare from the typical agency?

Image courtesy of khunaspix at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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By healthcare business consultant David E. Williams, president of Health Business Group.