When You're the NFL Commish, Getting E-Medical Record Interoperability's a Cinch 47
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."
Some fat gasbag called... lets get right on it! (Score:1)
He needs that info right away so his boys can stand around in a field and do nothing for 3 hours!
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Now if only he'd deal with blatant cheating (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
Re:Now if only he'd deal with blatant cheating (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, the NFL could get some really good PR out of this.
If they're able to get every hospital's EMR to work with their system (over time), then that means that their system becomes a gold-standard for interoperability.
So if they publish the format they use, ANYBODY should be able to use that format and have the records be directly importable into any hospital system where NFL players have been seen.
If they did this, the NFL could be seen as leaders in healthcare reform, which would definitely help their image on the healthcare front -- and might light some fires under the vendors who are abusing the system as well.
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They obviously slipped a healthy dose of stupidity [cloudfront.net] into whatever refreshing beverage was being consumed by the Seahawk's Head Coach and Offensive Coordinator.
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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...
Heh, you can always recognize the bitter Seahawks fans.
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You don't have to be a Seahawk's fan to be mad that the NFL has done nothing about a team that's been caught repeatedly cheating.
You probably don't have to be.......but somehow only Seahawks fans seem to care about this one......
So basically... (Score:2)
...fuck hospital administration?
Those who ignore the past... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Those who ignore the past... (Score:1)
They already have your medical records if they want them. At some point it was entered into a hospital' s computer system. If it was, they have access to it.
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I've worked in healthcare IT for two decades and the whole interop dream of HL7 / EDI standards is still something of an unrealized fant
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I read TFA and the author completely misses the issue
The author didn't miss the issue. The issue was whether an employer can get patient data from hospitals all over the country for their employees. The technology is there, that's what HL2 does; I've worked on a few similar systems - it's a hassle but it can be done (although Imaging seems to be a bigger hassle). As the author points out, the real problem is getting that HL7 feed turned on. The NFL has enough money and clout to make it happen.
You bring up the unrelated issue of whether the federal government
At what cost? (Score:1)
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My intent with my reply to AC was to illustrate that records-sharing doesn't necessarily violate HIPAA so long as qualified providers are doing direct care or TPO.
That said, what should be feasible at any hospital with HL7 or similar standards-based interfaces for existing vendors and/or a relatively modern EMR is that they can export the data and le
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Calling HL7 a standards based interface is a very very large joke. It's about as 'standard' as semi-formatted XML document. Yeah you can communicate the structure, however each hospital/vendor/mapper implements where the data goes differently, hence the massive interop headaches.
While the NHL could generate their own canonical format for storage, they would still need to map it to each and every EMR they interacted with. Curious how they solved that one.
I Call BS! (Score:2, Interesting)
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 co
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Disclaimer: PACS employee for state wide health system here...
Calling Bullshit here that it's as 'easy as a call to the Hospital Administrator'.
I agree with your calling BS on that story.
I used to work in a hospital IT department, and what the AC above said is spot on. Heck, it's hard enough for the typical hospital to get some kind of interoperability between their own PACS system and their own EMR and their own pharmacy.
The article says some NFL commish called some hospital CEO, but it doesn't make it clear exactly what he was asking for.
If the article is implying that the hospital's CEO ordered EMR interoperability between the NFL and the hospit
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Calling Bullshit here that it's as 'easy as a call to the Hospital Administrator'.
Please note, the summary says getting the rollout started only takes a couple days. I presume these are hospitals that are already getting plenty of money from the NFL (the NFL pays a lot for healthcare), so they're willing to spend some extra money on IT costs if that's what it takes to keep their biggest paying customer happy.
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Thank you to AC and clovis for their insightful replies to this article. Hearing the "inside story" on EMR interoperability is fascinating.
I am always impressed by the fact that these extremely complex systems interact at all. In fact, it's more unbelievable when they interoperate than when they do not. It seems similar to the surprise I had when the government was creating its healthcare exchanges. I was amazed that they were able to get those large private insurers' systems to work together at all. Again,
The problem is private insurance (Score:1)
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
HIPPA never had a "P" for privacy. (Score:2)
The original HIPPA law was called the "HIPAA: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act" but the portability never happened.
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The original HIPPA law was called the "HIPAA: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act" but the portability never happened.
Sure it did. We've had portability of health insurance for a long time now--where portability simply meant that once you had health insurance, you could keep getting it...