Washington-Area Companies Trying to Reinvigorate Electronic Medical Records Roll-Out

So far, growth is slow, despite significant involvement by companies in DC, VA, and MD

By Bob Keefe | August 31, 2010

The federal government is investing billions of dollars to try and make electronic medical records standard in hospitals and doctors offices across the country.

Yet so far, the initiative that promises to breathe new life into the tech industry has seemed a bit like a patient on life support.

A just-released study by the Harvard School of Public Health found that less than 12 percent of U.S. hospitals used electronic health records as of last year. A mere 2 percent met federal "meaningful use" standards to qualify for grant money.

Two Washington-area tech companies recently announced plans that could help boost that percentage and pave the way for more adoption of electronic medical records.

Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin Corp. last week announced it won two contracts to develop software and launch pilot programs aimed at building out the Nationwide Health Information Network, a federally sponsored medical records exchange system. The contracts, from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services are worth $9 million over two years.

"This is all about enhancing and broadening a way for people to securely exchange medical information," said Lockheed spokeswoman Kimberly Jaindl.

Lockheed's e-health team will do most of the work at its offices in the Baltimore area, Jaindl said.

Reston, Va.-based government services contractor Maximus Inc., meanwhile, said last week it is launching a new practice to help states develop and implement electronic health record programs.

Under last year's economic stimulus program, the federal government made about $20 billion available for states to rollout electronic health records and create new Web-based health information exchanges.
Such state programs could not only generate business for front-line tech companies - software vendors, data management companies and computer makers - but also for companies that work in government compliance and auditing.

In order to qualify for federal funding, states, medical providers and the IT companies that supply them must meet so-called "meaningful use" guidelines from the Department of Health and Human Services. The guidelines are designed to make sure the federal funded technology that hospitals add is making a real difference, not just supplying doctors and nurses with new gadgets.

The process can be cumbersome - something that Maximus is banking on.

"In addition to distributing the incentives, states are responsible for ensuring oversight, conducting audits, determining whether meaningful use was met, and verifying that there is no duplication between Medicaid and Medicare incentive payments," Maximus president Bruce Caswell said in a statement. The company's "Meaningful Use Solutions" system, he said, is designed to help states oversee the administration of electronic medical records programs from start to finish.

Other Washington-area companies also are capitalizing on the push for new technology in the medical industry.

Ashburn, Va.-based Brainware Inc., whose software helps companies capture, manage and search data, recently landed several contracts to help health care companies move toward electronic invoice management and processing.

"Some of the most advanced medical institutions in the world continue to operate with labor-intensive data entry," Brainware CEO Carl Mergele said in announcing a recent contract with a hospital system in the Midwest.

The medical profession has been one of the slowest industries in America to adopt to new technology.
Walk into any doctor's office in the Washington area - not to mention more rural areas around the country - and you're likely to find doctors still scribbling illegible scripts on paper pads and shelves full of paper medical charts.

All that old-school note taking and record keeping, proponents of electronic medical records say, can lead to deadly mistakes and make it tough for medical professionals to share charts and information electronically.

"Paper-based medical records lead to hundreds of thousands of errors each year in American hospitals and probably contribute to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans," Harvard School of Public Health researcher Ashish Jah said in releasing his survey of electronic medical record use.

The biggest deterrents to implementing electronic health record systems are costs - especially in this economy - and the hassle.

"There is overwhelming evidence that EHRs can help, yet the expense and the disruption that implementing these systems can cause has forced many hospitals to move slowly," Jah said.

President Barack Obama has made electronic medical records a major priority.

In a speech in January 2009, then President-elect Obama announced plans to invest as much as $10 billion every year for five years, with a goal of having electronic medical records standard throughout the nation's medical industry by 2014. The first of that money began rolling out this year as part of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

"This will cut waste, eliminate red tape, and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests," Obama said. "It just won't save billions of dollars and thousands of jobs -- it will save lives by reducing the deadly but preventable medical errors that pervade our health care system."

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