2015 Hospital Healthcare IT Predictions

At the start of 2015, I thought I’d put down some predictions on what will happen in the world of healthcare IT and EHR. These won’t be crazy predictions, since I don’t think anything crazy is going to happen in healthcare in 2015. We’ll see some clarity with a few programs and we’ll some some incremental change in things that matter to hospitals.

ICD-10 – I predict that ICD-10 will again be delayed with the next SGR fix. I don’t have any inside information on this. I just still believe that nothing’s different in 2015 that wasn’t true in 2014 (maybe AHIMA’s lobbying harder for no delay). I think another delay will put all of ICD-10 in question. Let’s hope whatever the decision is on ICD-10, it happens sooner than later. The ICD-10 uncertainty is worse than either outcome.

Meaningful Use – MU stage 2 will change from 365 days to 90 days. It will probably take until summer for it to actually happen which will put more people in a lurch since they’ll have even less time to plan for the 90 days than if they just made the change now. MU stage 2 numbers will be seen as great by those who love meaningful use and terrible by those who think it’s far reaching. The switch to 90 days means enough hospitals will hop on board that meaningful use will continue forward until it runs out of money.

EHR Penalties – Doctors will be blind sided by all the penalties that are coming with meaningful use, PQRS, and value based reimnbursement, even though it’s been very clear that these penalties are coming. Doctors will pan it off on “I can’t keep up with all the complex legislation.” and “I knew the penalties were coming, but I din’t think they’d be that big.” Watch for some movement to try and get some relief from these penalties for doctors. However, it won’t be enough for the doctors who want to start a perpetual SGR fix like delay of the EHR penalties. Many practices will have to shut down because of poor business management.

Direct to Consumer Medicine – Doctors will start to move towards a number of direct to consumer medicine options such as telemedicine and concierge medicine. These doctors will love their new found freedom from insurance reimbursement and the ongoing hamster on a treadmill churn of patients through their office. How far this will go, I’m not sure, but it will create a gap between these doctors who love this “new” form of medicine and those who feel their stuck on the treadmill.

Interoperability – 2015 still won’t see widespread healthcare interoperability, but it will help to lay a clear framework of where healthcare interoperability needs to go. A couple large EHR vendors will embrace this framework as an attempt to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

There you go. A few 2015 predictions. What do you think of these predictions? Any others you’d like to make? I feel like my predictions feel a little bit dire. A few show signs of promise, but I think that 2015 will largely be a transitory period as we try to figure out how to get the most value out of EHR.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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