After presenting at the Association of Community Cancer Centers’ (ACCC) national meeting last year, Navigating Cancer’s CEO, Gena Cook, was asked to submit a guest article to ACCC’s publication, Oncology Issues.
Published in the January/February 2012 issue, Gena provides an overview of how patient portals will play a central role in solving the Meaningful Use objectives of providing patient centered care.
Click here to read Gena’s article and learn how patient portals are already supporting Meaningful Use, increasing efficiency, and improving patient satisfaction. Two case studies describe patient portal implementation and use in the oncology practice setting.
Related links
- What is a patient portal?
- 8 Steps to Get Ready for Meaningful Use Attestation
- Navigating Cancer’s Patient Engagement Portal
Our healthcare system, and the oncology market in particular, is in the beginning stages of a transformative process, adopting new technologies, care models, and standards of care in an effort to provide a more patient centered approach to care. Patients are at the core of the healthcare system, yet have been underutilized in their role and ability to be active participants in their care.
What is Patient Engagement?
Since the early days of the Internet we have witnessed a rise in patient engagement as patients have gone online to self diagnose symptoms, learn about their condition and treatment options once they receive a diagnosis, and connect with communities of like patients to learn from their experiences.
With the turn of the calendar to a brand new year, I thought it would be a good time to take a look at the trends and issues that will impact patient centered care in community oncology over the next 12 months, with some examples of how health IT will enable a stronger partnership between healthcare providers and their patients.
HITECH Incentives for the Meaningful Use Objectives Peak in 2012
Probably the biggest issue that everyone is focused on is achieving the Meaningful Use objectives this year. Most of the practices we have spoken with were focused on the eRx Incentive Program in 2011 and are now turning their attention to the HITECH incentives for 2012. We haven’t yet spoken with a practice that isn’t planning to attest for HITECH this year. The big issue I see is how quickly practices can prepare to be able to attest. Most practices were upgraded to the HITECH certified versions of the EHR late last year, and now practices are starting to think through their patient portal strategy and implementation. From there, they can start the work of ensuring that they are actually using the systems in a way to achieve the objectives.
Greg Maxfield, Navigating Cancer’s VP of Business Development, will speak at COA’s 7th Annual Conference in Las Vegas this March as part of their Patient Advocacy Program. The following is a guest blog post from Rose Gerber, COA’s Director of Patient Advocacy and a breast cancer survivor.
Rose provides some history and focus of COA’s Patient Advocacy Network (CPAN) as well as agenda and registration information for this year’s event. We’re excited to be participating and hope you can join us.
The following is a guest article from Bo Gamble, Director of Strategic Practice Initiatives with Community Oncology Alliance (COA). The medical home/ACO topic is a hot one that often generates more questions than answers. Bo shares his insights into the differences between the medical home and accountable care organization (ACO) models, including the risks and benefits of each.
Medical Home Ingredients – All Good Things
Image source: ACO Summit www.acosummit.com
This past year seems to have included every letter of the alphabet soup of changes and challenges, from ACO, ASP, CMS, FDA, GPCI, NCCN, PCMH, SGR and all of the other acronyms in between. It seems like we can’t get through even a few sentences before spewing out one of the alphabetized words. And yet, two of these concepts seem to have withstood the test of time – ACOs and PCMH. Does this mean that they both have staying power? Let’s explore………………
8 Steps to get Ready for Meaningful Use Attestation
Most of the oncology practice administrators we speak with are planning to attest for the Meaningful Use incentives in 2012. While it may seem like there’s plenty of time between now and then, there are specific steps that will impact how soon you should get started on implementing and adopting your solution. Below are the 8 steps in the Meaningful Use attestation process, and a timeframe for how long each step could take.
Jay Bradner is a researcher at Harvard University and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. In a recent Ted Talk video, he shares how he developed a compound that can attach itself to a rare cancer gene so that it “forgets” that it’s cancer and stops growing.
Rather than keep his finding a secret, he published a paper and released the chemical identity of the compound to the medical research community and encouraged others to experiment and test it, which over 70 labs are now doing. As a result of this open source approach, labs are having success in experiments that are preventing the growth of leukemia and multiple myeloma cells. Click below to watch the video.
Related Links
- Explore cancer treatment options by cancer type
- List of cancer chemotherapy drugs
- List of cancer chemotherapy treatments
Partnership Embeds Integration into Patient Engagement Portal
Today we announced an exciting partnership with Unlimited Systems, the leading national provider of systems integration to over 1,300 cancer care providers. We’ve embedded Unlimited Systems’ Interlink gateway integration engine into our Patient Engagement Portal, which makes it possible to easily integrate with any of the practice management, lab and electronic health record (EHR) systems used in oncology practices across the country. As a result, this will enable cancer clinics that adopt our certified Patient Engagement Portal and a certified EHR to integrate the two and qualify for the HITECH Act Meaningful Use incentives.
Patient portals are online applications that allow patients to securely communicate with their healthcare providers and access their personal health information. Patient portals can operate as independent, stand alone web sites or can be integrated into the existing websites of health care providers or payers.
What’s the difference between a patient portal, personal health record (PHR) and electronic health record (EHR)?
The lines between the three are blurring, as patient portals are becoming more integrated into other systems, and are expanding the services they provide.
Navigating Cancer Patient Engagement Portal Receives Certification
We’re excited to announce that our Patient Engagement Portal has received the federal government’s
“meaningful use” stamp of approval be earning electronic health record (EHR) modular certification. As a certified solution, our clinic partners who have a certified EHR are able to qualify for the meaningful use incentives under the HITECH portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
With certification, our Patient Engagement Portal becomes the only oncology specific patient portal solution that can integrate with any certified EHR system. This offers oncology clinics more choices to customize a solution that best fits their needs, and provides their patients with the best user experience.
In addition, our Patient Engagement Portal has been certified for more meaningful use objectives than any other modular patient portal solution, which makes it easier for clinics to qualify for the incentives.
Why Patient Portals Are Necessary to Meet Meaningful Use
EHR’s are not designed to solve the patient engagement objectives of the meaningful use rules in an efficient manner, if at all, so they need a patient portal. Specifically, they need a patient portal to provide patients with: