News 6/20/13

From Guppy: “Re: KLAS scores. KLAS always seems to hand-pick the largest vendors as winners. It was interesting to look at the data you reported because it would appear that a number of the small, specialty-specific vendors do a much better job at usability than the big fish – shocking!”  “Usability” is not necessarily the same thing as customer satisfaction, which is the metric KLAS is measuring. Regardless, the KLAS scores always stir up plenty of controversy. At least in the ambulatory EMR segment, several of the smaller vendors did quite well, including PCC, SRS, and Sevocity.

The 110-provider Oregon Medical Group will implement Phytel’s Outreach, Insight, and Coordinate modules for population health management.

Technology could improve treatment outcomes for children with chronic illnesses, according to a report from Boston Children’s Hospital and the Verizon Foundation. The white paper stresses the need for technology that improves coordination among members of the care team; improves care management by providing appropriate data required for decision-making; facilitates the education of care team members on available resources; and incents providers to adopt technology that focuses on the patient and family rather than a traditional physician-centric model.

CMS publishes updated 2014 clinical quality measures for EPs, which are categorized based on the agency’s priorities for patient and family engagement, patient safety, care coordination, population health, efficient use of resources, and clinical effectiveness.

Yesterday I stopped by my optometrist’s office to pick up some contacts. While the tech was hunting for my order, he took a phone call. As I became increasingly impatient for him to get off the phone and finish helping me, another employee explained that the tech was talking to the doctor. When I finally walked out the door, I wondered to myself who should have been the tech’s priority: the customer/patient or the doctor?  Anyone?

Robert M. Wah, MD, the ONC’s first deputy national coordinator and a retired Navy captain, is named president-elect of the AMA.

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