Dear Friend,
I am delighted and proud to inform you that for the past year 5 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 eHealth Made Easy.
The first product “PQRI Made Easy” is a totally free tool that enables healthcare
providers to participate in Medicare’s Physician’s Quality Reporting Initiative
(PQRI). Pursuant to PQRI, a healthcare provider can earn a bonus and adjust to the
transition from a traditional fee-for-service to a pay-for performance environment.
Additionally, we are integrating ePrescribing from DrFirst and elaboratory systems
from the Med Plus division of Quest Diagnostics into our suite of e-health services.
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. Cloud Computing or Software as a Service
(SaaS), used by Microsoft and Google for their healthcare services (PHRs) enables
healthcare providers to adopt information technology inexpensively and
most
importantly 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; the
largest of these programs are in California and Massachusetts and over the last
few years, physicians in these states have received
of millions of dollars in
P4P 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 was radically
revised for 2009. Hospital payments are now 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, the MIPPA
Act mandated that CMS publish a list in the Spring/ 2010 of the healthcare providers
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).
Congress has created a 50 billion dollar entitlement
known as the HiTech Act motivating Medicare paid healthcare providers to employ
information technology for medical record keeping. This legislation builds upon
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, far 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, the HiTech Act
inventiveness healthcare providers to adopt healthcare IT because they can receive
between $48,000 and $65,000 to adopt a certified EHR system and use it in a “meaningful”
way. Key to the incentive, is that providers may keep the difference between what
they receive and what they spend.
The maturity of Internet technology with wide-spread high-speed access has made
Software as a Service a reality. With Cloud Computing/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!
The eHealth Made Easy 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 as well as enabling
the vision of the electronic exchange of healthcare information.
I encourage you to browse through our website
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
eHealth Made Easy