On the heels of a previous blog entry about momentum building toward greater health IT adoption comes survey results showing that there is some $700 million available to help physicians fund technology purchases. What makes this especially encouraging is that cost has long been cited as one of the major obstacles to more widespread proliferation of HIT. It’s exciting to see that we’ve come to a point where interest in technology is growing commensurately with financial assistance to adopt it.

The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) says its survey found that there are no less 90 public and private programs underway nationwide aimed at helping medical practices acquire and implement electronic health records. The largest is in New York where $157 million has been made available to about 18,000 doctors through regional networks. Other initiatives have been launched by hospital groups, insurers, employers, public-private partnerships and governments at various levels. All told, CCHIT says money is available to help more than 40,000 physicians adopt electronic health records.

Of course another way to overcome the health IT cost hurdle is to implement an approach I’ve discussed in this forum several times; one that requires physicians to simply invest in a computer and Internet access. This is all docs need to connect to a growing number of insurers that are willing to exchange clinical data with them absolutely free. It would be an opportunity for providers to sort of test drive health IT. And I’m quite confident that once they experience its value, they’ll come to rely on it and be willing to incrementally upgrade in terms of both technology and data complexity. The fact that more funding is available to facilitate this can be even more incentive to do so.

In any event, let’s be thankful that more and more entities are starting to realize the value of HIT and making money available for its adoption. Every little bit counts.

One of the up-and-coming trends I’ve seen in the health care industry is a renewed engagement and vigor toward the integration of pharmacy utilization management and medical management among health care providers. The idea was the topic of least two presentations I attended at various conferences in the past year, and now seems to be gaining real momentum.

With the growing use of extremely expensive biological medication therapies, or “specialty pharmacy medications,” health plans are increasingly realizing the benefits of bringing pharmacy back into the core health management process. Given their high cost and the complexity of their indications, specialty pharmacy medicines generally require a case manager’s manual review. It therefore behooves the plan to ensure that the medication is going to be appropriate; that other, less expensive treatments have been attempted and that the medication is being used for its intended purpose (as opposed to an off-label use).

Further strengthening the integration of pharmacy and medical management has clinical benefits as well, not the least of which is providing a more complete, holistic view of patients. For example, with information sharing technology, disease managers and/or physicians can be alerted when a patient has filled a prescription from a specialist or other physician. Obviously, this would enable the disease manager or primary physician to determine potential interactions or simply be aware of the new medication and how it fits into the patient’s overall care regimen. Alternatively, it could underscore medication “gaps” so to speak. The disease manager or physician could be alerted when a patient hasn’t gotten a scheduled refill and then contact the patient to determine the reason. Also, sharing this information with a pharmacist incorporates the input of a medication expert who might offer suggestions on alternative or complimentary treatments. .

Naturally, health information technology will play a large role in the success of pharmacy/medical management integration. It will be the means through which the respective entities — insurers, physicians, pharmacies and even patients themselves — will be able to communicate and share information. This is precisely the type of scenario we at MEDecision had in mind when we designed our new Nexalign collaborative health care exchange technology. One of its core competencies is to facilitate secure, private and trustworthy electronic information connections between various health care constituencies, so this emerging trend is a very satisfying validation of our market forecast, if you will. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out in the coming months.