Summary
In the US, the new subspecialty of Clinical Informatics focuses on systems-level improvements
in care delivery through the use of health information technology (HIT), data analytics,
clinical decision support, data visualization and related tools. Clinical informatics
is one of the first subspecial-ties in medicine open to physicians trained in any
primary specialty. Clinical Informatics benefits patients and payers such as Medicare
and Medicaid through its potential to reduce errors, increase safety, reduce costs,
and improve care coordination and efficiency.
Even though Clinical Informatics benefits patients and payers, because GME funding
from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has not grown at the same
rate as training programs, the majority of the cost of training new Clinical Informaticians
is currently paid by academic health science centers, which is unsustainable. To maintain
the value of HIT investments by the government and health care organizations, we must
train sufficient leaders in Clinical Informatics. In the best interest of patients,
payers, and the US society, it is therefore critical to find viable financial models
for Clinical Informatics fellowship programs. To support the development of adequate training programs in Clinical Informatics,
we request that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issue clarifying
guidance that would allow accredited ACGME institutions to bill for clinical services
delivered by fellows at the fellowship program site within their primary specialty.
Citation: McCoy AB, Wright A, Krousel-Wood M, Thomas EJ, McCoy JA, Sittig DF. Validation of
a crowdsourcing methodology for developing a knowledge base of related problem-medication
pairs. Appl Clin Inf 2015; 6: 334–344
http://dx.doi.org/10.4338/ACI-2015-01-RA-0010
Keywords
Clinical Informatics - Education - Graduate Medical Education - Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services - Health Information Technology
