Apr. 22--North Texas doctors under pressure to start using electronic medical records are about to get some help.
Area health care professionals can meet with technology experts, vendors and government officials during the Texas Health Information Technology Summit today through Saturday.
The summit, at the Sheraton Dallas North Hotel near Galleria Dallas, aims to answer health providers' questions about e-prescribing, stimulus funding, work flow design and project management.
Hospital technology executives across the state are slightly uneasy about what's expected of them, said Ed Marx, senior vice president and chief information officer at Texas Health Resources hospital system in Arlington. Marx is one of the speakers today at the summit.
"There's a concern that the bar is raised too high," Marx said. "Not only do you have to have it implemented, but you have to be using it in a meaningful way."
Computerizing the paper-based world of medicine was a significant component of last year's $787 billion stimulus package, which reserved $45 billion for hospitals and physicians to adopt electronic health records.
Despite years of technology development, most hospitals and physician offices, including those in North Texas, can't electronically share information or even record patient data.
The government has taken it upon itself to decide what kinds of systems will improve care, and how providers should use the systems to achieve that. In the act Congress passed, that exercise is called "meaningful use."
Regional extension centers across the country are charged with trying to educate doctors and hospitals on what the government feels is an appropriate electronic health record system.
The summit could turn into a bonanza for health technology vendors. They'll be trying to woo the state's four regional extension centers, which have nearly $36 million in government funds to assist the state's doctors and hospitals with setting up the systems.
The stimulus package also established a carrot-and-stick approach to lure providers into the electronic age. Physician practices could be paid up to $44,000 over five years, and hospitals could get a maximum of $15.9 million to install systems that comply with meaningful use rules.
The government would penalize providers that don't participate, reducing their Medicare and Medicaid payments by 1 percent, beginning in 2015. In later years, the penalty grows to 3 percent.
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