June 27, 2010

Health information keys Wednesday event

By Kathy Ursprung
The Chronicle

     Water’s Edge Health & Wellness Center will be the site of one of six public stakeholder meetings Wednesday on the development of health information exchange and technology that promises to reshape aspects of health care in Oregon.
     The Health Information and Technology Oversight Committee (HITOC) and fellow stakeholders will meet Wednesday, June 30, from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. at Water’s Edge, 551 Lone Pine Blvd. near the interstate bridge in The Dalles.
     Federal health reform legislation will have a dramatic effect on health information in the coming years, said Brian Ahier, who is the health information guru at Mid-Columbia Medical Center (MCMC).
     “What [President] Obama has said is that, within five years, every American will have an electronic health record,” Ahier said.
     MCMC has invested heavily in electronic medical recordkeeping in recent years, but many rural health care clinics and hospitals still don’t have electronic records, including the Moro health clinic and Pioneer Memorial Hospital in John Day.
     “Over the next four years, there are incentive payments in Medicare for using electronic records,” he explained. “But in 2015 providers will start being penalized for not using electronic records.”
     That’s why Ahier hopes to attract strong attendance at Wednesday’s meeting from rural medical providers.
     The meeting is particularly exciting, Ahier said, in light of a new $21 million federal grant to Oregon to develop health information technology. Oregon Health and Science University and OCHIN are sharing the grant and have been designated a regional extension center for health information technology. OCHIN is an Oregon health information technology and service organization for community-based clinics.
     “Oregon is right out there nationally at the forefront of this effort,” Ahier said. Gorge Health Connections, one of seven health information technology consortia around the state, has been recognized as a statewide model for collaboration, he added. Its members include both MCMC and Providence Hood River Memorial Hospital, as well as other local providers.
     Gorge Health Connections will host the Water’s Edge meeting.
     Other health technology developments are also under way in Oregon that dovetail with the health information technology effort, Ahier said. The Oregon Health Network is receiving $20.2 million in subsidies over five years to develop regional broadband network infrastructure for health care under a federal pilot program.
     The effort has positive implications for telehealth efforts, Ahier said, by bringing health care to patients from a distance. For example, a diagnostician in Portland can consult with a physician and patient in Heppner without the inconvenience and discomfort of long travel hours.
     The changes under Obama’s health care reforms also have implications in the employment world.
     “The administration estimates nationally that we will need 50,000 health information technology workers in the next two years,” Ahier said.
     Portland Community College is part of a consortium of community colleges looking at how to train, or retrain these workers. Ahier said seven new types of jobs will require training that can be accomplished with either a six-month or one-year certificate for people who are already experienced in either information technology or clinical settings.

Online:
www.oregonhealthnet.org
www.ochin.org
www.oregon.gov/OHPPR/HITOC
www.mcmc.net