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7 · 15 · 2011

eHana EHR is certified ONC-ATCB Meaningful Use compliant

Drummondcertified_ehr-modular
eHana is excited to announce that its EHR solution has been certified compliant under the ARRA requirements for Electronic Health Records certification! As a result, organizations using eHana's web-based EHR may be eligible for up to $63,750 in incentive funds per Eligible Professional.

To learn more about Meaningful Use, please refer our earlier blog post on the subject. Thanks to our partner the Drummond Group and our clients for supporting us throughout this process.

Details of our Certification

eHana EHR v.2011-MU, certification #04212011-1023-1, is 2011/2012 compliant and has been certified on April 21, 2011, by an ONC-ATCB in accordance with the applicable Eligible Provider certification criteria adopted by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. This certification does not represent an endorsement by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services or guarantee the receipt of incentive payments. Additional software relied upon: DrFirst RCopia.

More information on our certification is available from the HHS.

12 · 16 · 2010

eHana Profile: Moving Behavioral Health Agencies from Paper to Pixel Records

eHana has been featured in a profile by Xconomy blogger Ryan McBride in a post entitled "From Honolulu to Back Bay: eHana Moving Behavioral Health Agencies from Paper to Pixel Records":

Boston is a great place for bumping into people who are pushing the envelope in healthcare. In fact, the city’s leadership in health IT factored into Jacob Buckley-Fortin’s decision to expand his software firm eHana from its original home of Honolulu, HI, to Boston in 2006. Now Buckley-Fortin, the co-founder and CEO of eHana, is one of those people who you’ll bump into here in the Hub.

I met Buckley-Fortin at our Xconomy Xchange event in Boston in late September, after we had just watched a debate of sorts between Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush and eClinicalWorks CEO Girish Navani about the evolution of electronic health records. Buckley-Fortin, 31, knows a lot about this topic because his firm provides EHRs to human services and behavioral health providers—albeit at a smaller scale than what Watertown, MA-based Athena (NASDAQ:ATHN) and Westborough, MA-based eClinicalWorks do for hospitals and doctors’ practices.

You can read the whole thing over at the Xconomy site.

7 · 14 · 2010

Federal "Meaningful Use" requirements released

Just a quick update from the world of health information technology - today the Federal CMS (The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services) released the "final rule" defining Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records. We here at eHana thought this was an important and interesting development so we put together a quick email overview. We hope you'll find it helpful.
 
First, some background: Agencies must demonstrate Meaningful Use of an EHR product in order to qualify for special Medicare/Medicaid EHR incentive payments in 2011-2015. Unfortunately behavioral health, developmental disability, and human service provider agencies are not generally eligible for the incentive reimbursement outside of certain specialty healthcare programs. Incentives may be extended in the future (there is a bill currently making its way through the House for behavioral health) so it's certainly a worthwhile exercise to review the new eligibility requirements.
 
As part of the Meaningful Use push, new EHR certification regulations have also been released. The primary national vendor of EHR certification services, CCHIT, has indicated it will pursue status with DHS as a Meaningful Use certifying authority. EHRs certified under CCHIT-2011 and earlier will not be "grandfathered" into Meaningful Use compliance and will need to be re-certified.
 
The Meaningful Use rules themselves have been relaxed pretty dramatically from earlier drafts. Agencies are required to meet all 15 criteria from a "Core Set" of requirements, including demographics collection, basic interoperability, and CPOE (e-scripting and e-med orders). Agencies are also required to meet 5 of the more challenging "Menu Set" criteria. That's "Phase I", covering 2011 and 2012. In "Phase II", it's expected that the "Menu Set" criteria will be merged into an updated "Core Set" of 20 requirements and new requirements will be added.
 
I've attached screenshots of the requirement sets below. The entire final rule can be found online here: http://www.cms.gov/ehrincentiveprograms/ -- it's over 800 pages long and includes many lengthy discussions and responses to public comments. David Blumenthal, National Coordinator for Health IT, provides a good summary in this New England Journal of Medicine article.
 
So what does it all mean, and why should you care? As promised, these rules aren't just about using EHR for the sake of using EHR. They set measurable benchmarks for "meaningfully" using these tools, a high, yet attainable bar that will move the US towards more integrated, universal EHR adoption. CMS is clearly motivated to ensure that all Medicaid/Medicare providers are heading in this direction, whether or not they’re eligible for specific incentives.
 
At eHana, we're evaluating the new criteria and will keep you updated about our compliance strategy going forward. You can also subscribe to our mailing list and twitter feed to be kept up to date on the absolute latest health IT industry changes.
 

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6 · 14 · 2010

iPad + EHR = Awesome

Ipad

Hi everyone. There's been a lot of chatter recently in the health care sphere about the potential of the Apple iPad and other similar "tablet" devices. (Examples here, here, and here)
 
We just wanted to add our two cents--we've been testing the iPad as tool for accessing the eHana EHR, and so far it's proven to be an absolutely fantastic device.
 
A bit of technical background: we designed the eHana EHR to be 100% web-native because we knew that the future was in web-connected devices like the iPad. That means you don't have to install any software to run the eHana EHR, so when a cool new device comes along, everything just works.
 
In our testing, the iPad displayed client charts, scanned documents, secure messages, the Front Desk tool, and other parts of the EHR beautifully. The only major issue we ran into is that while it's great for information retrieval, the iPad's on-screen keyboard made extensive data-entry difficult. Fortunately the device supports external bluetooth keyboards so you can progress note to your heart's content.
 
Over time we expect tablet devices like the iPad to gain broader acceptance within the health care enterprise. They're cost-effective ($499 for the base iPad model) and pretty indestructablle--perfect for mobile staff. Our hope is that deployment of these tools will help support better clinical decision-making, improve record quality, and encourage more timely documentation.
 
If you're currently trailing the iPad within your organization, or are interested in doing so, we'd love to hear from you.
 
Update: James Fallows has posted an excellent guest column by David Rothman over at the Atlantic proposing an "iPad Stimulus."
5 · 10 · 2010

eHana EHR: MSDP Certified

Ma-color-certified-centered
Did you know? The eHana is the first integrated Electronic Health Record (EHR) certified compliant with the Massachusetts Standardized Documentation Project!

The MSDP is a comprehensive set of documentation standards aimed at ensuring clinical best practices and regulatory compliance for behavioral health and human service provider organizations in Massachusetts. And while the standards were designed for use in the Bay State, we've found that the best practices they enforce are attractive to agencies throughout the country. We've worked closely with our partnership agencies as the Association for Behavioral Health to ensure our implementation of the MSDP is the best possible.
 
The MSDP standards define dozens of common forms and workflows, all of which are integrated seamlessly into eHana's HIPAA-compliant integrated Electronic Health Record. This approach ensures a secure standardized record across your entire continuum of care--including program types that don't use the MSDP.
 
Critical to the MSDP is the "Golden Thread" process: Assessing the needs of the person served in the Comprehensive Assessment, developing a clinically appropriate Individualized Action Plan (Treatment Plan), with goals, objectives, and interventions and documenting regular progress through Progress Notes. The eHana EHR guides clinical staff through each step, while eliminating duplicate entry and enforcing business rules through data validation.
 
The eHana EHR supports the full range of supported MSDP program types, including:
For more information about our certified MSDP solutions, please contact eHana on the web, or call us at 1-888-443-4262. More information about the MSDP can be found on the Association for Behavioral Health's website.
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eHana works with innovative agencies to implement electronic health records that improve clinical quality, compliance, and financial outcomes.

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