Massachusetts helping to shape US efforts to digitize records

I forgot to blog about a recent article I read in the Boston Globe that emphasized why Massachusetts is in the fortunate position of being the country's electronic medical records focal point. According to Paul Egerman, Massachusetts is like the Silicone Valley of healthcare information technology.

Egerman went on to start one company, IDX Systems Corp., that was bought by General Electric for $1.2 billion, and another, eScription Inc., that was acquired by Nuance Communications Inc. last year for $363 million. He is now a volunteer adviser to David Blumenthal, the national coordinator for health information technology - and a former Harvard professor and Mass. General physician.

Synopsis of why Massachusetts is so influential in healthcare IT and the Obama Administration's goals?

- More experience than any other state

- Massachusetts doctors and hospitals do more electronic prescribing - eliminating the need for handwritten scraps of paper - than their counterparts in any other state.

According to John Halamka, chief information officer at CareGroup Healthcare System, ``The average use of EMRs in the US is between 2 and 20 percent. In Massachusetts, we're somewhere between 30 and 50 percent, so we've had a fair degree of experience with what works and what doesn't work.''

- Massachusetts won influence because Harvard economist David Cutler was the primary architect of candidate Barack Obama's healthcare plan.

Girish Navani of eClinicalWorks was also quoted in that article.

EClinicalWorks software is already used by about 25,000 doctors, and the company brought in $100 million in revenue last year. The company is hiring about twice as quickly - roughly 200 people in 2009, mainly in areas like training and customer support - as it would be without the stimulus, according to Girish Navani, eClinicalWorks chief executive...``The big picture,'' says Navani, ``is truly transforming healthcare, rather than just spending a lot of money and not getting to our goal.''

I included the source of the article so that you can read it in depth. It's really a good article! (I say that about most of the articles I cite to because I only blog about the good ones!)

Source: Scott Kirsner, State helping to shape US efforts to digitize health records for all, The Boston Globe, Business Section, pg.1 (July 12, 2009 Sunday