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When You're the NFL Commish, Getting E-Medical Record Interoperability's a Cinch
Lucas123 writes: The NFL recently completed the rollout of an electronic medical record (EMR) system and picture archiving & communication system (PACS) that allows mobile access for teams to player's health information at the swipe of a finger — radiological images, GPS tracking information, and detailed health evaluation data back to grade school. But as NFL football players are on the road a lot, often they're not being treated at hospitals or by specialists whose own EMRs are integrated with the NFL's; it's a microcosm of the industry-wide healthcare interoperability issue facing the U.S. today. The NFL, however, found achieving EMR interoperability isn't so much a technological issue as a political one, and if you have publicity on your side, it's not that difficult. NFL CIO Michelle McKenna-Doyle, who led the NFL's EMR rollout, said a call from a team owner to a hospital administrator typically does the trick. Even NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell once made the call to a hospital CEO, "and things started moving in the next couple of days," McKenna-Doyle said. "They're very aware of the publicity."
He needs that info right away so his boys can stand around in a field and do nothing for 3 hours!
This has nothing to do with "publicity". Rich powerful team owner calls rich powerful hospital CEO.
Commish... Really...?
My limited experience with medical records is that it isn't the hospitals that have issues interoperating, it's the vendors of the software. Try and convince them to give you access to the data in their system and they'll ask to sell you some hugely expensive component whose sole purpose is to translate their proprietary data format into a standards-compliant format. (And, again based on my limited experience, the "standard" version is so vague that you basically have to deal with every single vendor's output in a unique way anyway.)
My experience was limited because in the end we flat-out gave up trying to get data from EMRs because we weren't the NFL and therefore didn't have the clout to make demands.
Now if only the NFL could use their amazing abilities to rapidly get EMR interoperability to actually punish a team that's been caught repeatedly cheating and fraudulently "won" this year's Superbowl...
Just think what they can accomplish if they just put their minds towards it!
If Google Maps worked (as in the old version, not the new one Google wants to force upon us) then you could use GPX files to load into Google Maps and see where a player has been.
But no, Google want to take away a version of Google Maps that works and give us a Google Maps that doesn't work.
...fuck hospital administration?
I read TFA and the author completely misses the issue. The Clinton administration tried to implement this and congress (rightfully) voted against it. Until congress revokes the Patriot Act and proves that the Bill of Rights is still a valid contract, no informed citizen wants their medical records stored in a national archive. The privacy implications far outweigh the benefits and no amount of PCI compliance is going to ease that concern when the man-in-the-middle is tapping backbones with god damn nuclear submarines and lying to the tax payers about it. I'll stick to carrying my medical records in a banker box, thank you.
At what cost to all the other projects the hospital's IT department is working on? Every time one of these 'drop everything, the CEO wants this now!' projects come along it hurts everything else.
Wouldn't this violate HIPPA?
I would prefer, and even more casual writing style.
"When U the NFL, get'in med recs is cake!"
Disclaimer: PACS employee for state wide health system here...
Calling Bullshit here that it's as 'easy as a call to the Hospital Administrator'. All EMR systems are not created equal, and DO NOT all play well with one another. EMR systems CAN and do fall into vendor lock in. Our system that my hospital system uses, has somewhere between half a dozen to a dozen major hospitals in the US that use it. Possilby more, but I haven't been made aware.Why mention that? Read on.
Here's your example: The ONLY way we could do EMR sharing with an external hospital for patient PACS EMR information, is if that other hospital used the same PACS software that we use. There was a case here recently, where a hospital a few states away, DID have the same PACS package, and we were able to allow cross hospital EMR and image viewing for a patient who needed an organ transplant. Since they could view the records easily, vs. document and image faxing that it used to be... and since they had a donor for the organs, patient was transferred rapidly, and received the organs. Only made possible because of rapid access to the patients EMR and PACS.
Point is, the software package we use, restricts us to only those hospitals who use that same package for EMR image sharing for patients. The same can be said for a lot of hospitals. It IS vendor lockin. The NFL is not immune to that.
As for the 'NFL Commish' making a call? I'm sure he found out the nearest hospital that had the same, or a compatible, EMR and PACS systems with what the NFL uses and this is just publicity than the 'great breakthrough' of possibility with EMR & PACS in general.
And as far as where the tech side of things is at with EMR and PACS? (This is what I do...) There aren't enough hours in the day, and enough people in my department, to bring our system into what I would call, stable, and bulletproof! We aren't there yet by miles, and are still subject to corporate bullshit and politics.
I would imagine that the NFL is completely self-insured. It's rare today, but there are still organizations where the members don't have a traditional insurance company doing things for them...instead, your medical bills get sent to Mabel in HR and the organization's insurance fund reimburses the provider. Without knowing exactly what goes on, I'll bet something like that happens now with the NFL -- all the teams and players' union pay into a central fund and therefore it's no big deal if someone sees your health record. That would go double for football players who are frequently injured and often in a strange city.
Other than the tinfoil hat crowd, one of the major issues with having universal EHRs is the worry that insurers will discriminate against you as soon as they find you're not as healthy as their average customer. The ACA outlaws some of this, but (a) not everything is off the table, and (b) if the Republicans win the presidency in 2016 the whole law will be flushed down the toilet on Day 1 and we'll go back to the old system. If life and health insurers weren't allowed to see or use this data, people would probably feel differently about it. Health and life insurance are basically making bets against you dying or getting very sick during the policy term.
National-level EHRs would only work with universal health care, where insurance companies wouldn't exist. Only in specialized situations like the NFL is something like this possible now. A sudden illness is unlikely to wipe an NFL player out -- but that same illness will cause bankruptcy in a person whose insurance company dropped them just before they got sick.
The original HIPPA law was called the "HIPAA: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act" but the portability never happened.