Ehrs Can Save Money For Hospitals

By Author: Jaun Paul
Total Articles: 53
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Here is the monetary incentive that should goad on hospitals to help home health agencies participate in electronic health records.


Recently, we saw how some home home health agencies are using telehealth to bring down hospital readmissions for congestive heart failure patients. Lesser hospital readmissions for CHF is good news on the OASIS, quality and survey fronts. The latest issue of CMIO shows how wired home health agencies can benefit a hospital's bottom line as well.


Medicare shells out $12 billion per year on ‘potentially preventable' readmissions, MedPAC estimates. And with figures like that, the cost-cutting feds are bound to act. In the coming two or three years, everything will be bundled payments. Musood Pirzada, director of information technology for the Rehabilitation Institute of Cleveland Clinic, which has an initiative to integrate hospital and home health agency medical records, predicts Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers will give so many dollars for the hospital and post-acute care. ...
... And with bundled payments likely to hit soon, hospitals have a strong incentive to team up with post-acute providers.


Electronically integrating hospitals and HHA medical records potentially opens the ‘black box' that doctors face when they wonder what's going on in home care, family physician and geriatrician Steven Landers, MD tells CMIO.

HIT News is a free weekly healthcare newswire, that provides information about Healthcare IT technology providers and offers advanced Learning Opportunities about HHA medical records.