Healthcare IT made Easy

Dear Friend,

I am delighted and proud to inform you that for the past year 3 years, I have been working to create a suite of electronic healthcare record keeping products to be offered as Software as a Service, known as eHealthMadeEasyTM.

The first product “PQRIMadeEasyTM” is a totally free tool that enables healthcare providers to participate in Medicare’s reporting plan, the PQRI-Physicians Quality Reporting Initiative, earn a bonus and adjust to the transition from a traditional fee-for-service to a pay-for performance environment. Additionally, we are integrating e-prescribing and e-laboratory systems from Quest Diagnostics into our suite of e-health services.

The most exiting aspect is that even though it is late in the year, providers who use PQRIMadeEasy can still earn a bonus for 2008, while preparing themselves for bonuses that are three times larger in 2009. Moreover, by utilizing our e-prescribing product, the 2009 bonus can become six times larger! Factually, early adopters of our service have earned their 2008 bonus in less a few days.

In our opinion, the relevance of our suite of products is that based upon the facts at large, there is both an overriding need and desire to position medical information into the arena of electronic data processing. Software as a service (SaaS) enables healthcare providers to adopt information technology at a pace appropriate to their own practice; thus, avoiding the “meltdown” often associated with a rapid transition to EMR’s.

As far back as 1996, legislation regarding the electronic portability of healthcare information was enacted in the United States. During the first segment of this decade, payers began to examine the utilization of financial programs in order to motivate physicians and hospitals to deploy information technology for reporting on specific measures of the performance of quality medicine.

Today, there are more than 150 pay-for-performance programs. In the non-governmental world, the largest of these programs are in California and Massachusetts. Over the last few years, physicians in these states have received a total of $300,000,000 in bonuses!

Commencing in 2005, Medicare created an incentive program for the 4,000 largest hospitals in the United States. This program has resulted in a participation rate of 99 percent. Additionally, the CMS hospital reimbursement system will be radically revised in 2009. Hospital payments will be based upon both the relative performance of the hospital to its peer group and its year-over-year comparisons. The results for 2007 for these hospitals are available at HospitalCompare.gov and were published in more than 50 newspapers across the USA on May 21, 2008. Furthermore, MIPPA mandated that CMS publish a list of the physicians who successfully complete PQRI and utilize e-prescribing in 2009.

In 2007, Medicare initiated a comparable pay-for-reporting initiative for healthcare providers in outpatient settings. This initiative, known as PQRI, was extensively enhanced by the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (H.R. 6331 — MIPPA - July 15, 2008). It is certain that Congress will enact legislation in 2009 motivating Medicare paid healthcare providers to employ information technology for medical record keeping. This legislation will parallel the mandated utilization of e-prescribing that was embodied in the 2008 Medicare legislation.

Although the vast majority of healthcare providers use computers for administrative purposes, less than 20 percent use electronic healthcare record keeping systems. We note three main reasons for the poor penetration rate of EHR systems in the United States; 1) a lack of incentive, 2) a high upfront price tag, and 3) fear of disruption to their workflow caused by the implementation of an EMR. Today, most importantly, financial incentives enable healthcare providers to adopt healthcare IT - legislation compels the use of IT and commercial powers, such as Microsoft HealthVault and Google Health engender consumer pressure on providers to adopt IT solutions.

Furthermore, the maturity of Internet technology with wide-spread high-speed access has made Software as a Service a reality. With SaaS, there are no upfront costs, no local servers required, information is maintained and backed up on state-of-the-art secured server farms, secured sharing of medical information is a click away, and all at a very low cost!

Our suite of products was built to address the environmental changes of the United States’ Healthcare System. Offering easy to use, affordable healthcare record keeping is the key step towards better quality of care, enabling the vision of the electronic exchange of healthcare information.

I encourage you to visit our web-site at www.pqrimadeeasy.com and www.ehealthmadeeasy.com to view our services. As a leading professional in your field of endeavor, I would greatly appreciate your comments and observations.

George S. Blumenthal

President & CEO
Park Avenue Medical Data Systems LLC