Becker's Hospital Review

60 Health Information Technology Study: MU Attestation Not Associated With Care Quality By Helen Gregg 3 Insights From the First Industrywide Cyberattack Drill By Helen Gregg O n April 1, the Health Information Trust Alliance led HHS and several healthcare industry stakeholders in the first of a series of simulated cyberattacks to gauge the industry's re- sponse and threat preparedness against online threats. The exercise revealed three key findings, according to a report from Booz Allen Hamilton, which oversaw the drill. • The more robust an organization's intelligence processing ca- pabilities and engagement with stakeholders is, the better pre- pared it will be to respond to a cyberattack. The drill emphasized cyberattacks are much more than an IT issue and affect legal/ privacy, crisis management, business/clinical operations, man- agement and external business partners. • Participating in the drill improved organizations' readiness, re- gardless of the maturity and comprehensiveness of their respec- tive information security program. • The organizations wanted more flexibility in legal restrictions regarding communicating and collaborating with other stake- holders during a cyberattack. Participating organizations also had varied opinions on how best to engage law enforcement. Participating organizations included: athenahealth, Children's Medi- cal Center of Dallas, Cooper Health in Camden, N.J., CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, Health Care Services, Highmark, Humana, United Health Group, HHS and WellPoint. n Kaiser, Legacy Health, Others Join OpenNotes Initiative By Helen Gregg A s a part of the OpenNotes initiative, nine prominent health systems and physician practices in the northwestern U.S. have collaborated to provide patients with access to physician notes included in their electronic medical records. "Oregon and southwest Washington represent the first region in the U.S. to collaborate on implementing open notes as a community," said Amy Fel- lows, director of We Can Do Better, the nonprofit behind the effort, in a news release. "Local health providers have been very supportive of providing pa- tients here in the Northwest with this increased level of transparency. We look forward to the day when all consumers will be able to access their pro- viders' notes." The nine providers that are already practicing open notes or have plans to do so by 2015 include: Kaiser Permanente Northwest, Legacy Health in Portland, Ore., Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Providence Medical Group Oregon in Portland, The Portland Clinic, The Vancouver (Wash.) Clinic, Portland VA Medical Center, OCHIN in Portland and Salem (Ore.) Health. "Now, nearly 500,000 Kaiser Permanente members will, for the first time ever, be able to easily view the notes charted by their doctor during an office visit," said Michael McNamara, MD, CMIO of Kaiser Permanente Northwest, in the release. "We want patients to feel connected with their providers, and to have the type of tools that will enable them to be more engaged and in control of their care." n M eeting meaningful use criteria was not correlated with perfor- mance on clinical quality measures in a study conducted at clinics affiliated with Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Researchers compared the performance on seven quality measures of 540 clinic physicians who had attested to meaningful use stage 1 and 318 clinic physicians who had not. Results showed no statistically significant difference between the two groups' quality scores. The study's results differ from other recent studies that have found achiev- ing meaningful use improves care quality. For example, a study in Health Services Research found physicians who have attested to meaningful use are more likely to reap the clinical benefits of electronic health record systems. Lisa M. Kern, MD, and Rainu Kaushal, MD, both of the Weill Cornell Medi- cal College in New York City and the lead researchers on the study at the Brigham and Women's clinics, believe there are too many outside factors, such as physicians' clinical experience and the length of time they have had an EHR system, that make it difficult to draw definitive conclusions from studies like theirs. Additionally, they note the criteria for meeting meaningful use stage 1 is more focused on using EHRs than using them to improve care; those requirements won't begin until the later stages. "Stage 3 is expected to begin in 2017 and to reward providers for not only reporting the level of quality provided but for improving on that level as well," they write in the study. "Thus, the full effects of meaningful use on quality may not be measurable until stages 2 or 3." n

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