Hacking Healthcare: A Guide to Standards, Workflows, and Meaningful Use

by Fred Trotter, David Uhlman

Ready to take your IT skills to the healthcare industry? This concise book provides a candid assessment of the US healthcare system as it ramps up its use of electronic health records (EHRs) and other forms of IT to comply with the government’s Meaningful Use requirements. It’s a tremendous opportunity for tens of thousands of IT professionals, but it’s also a huge the program requires a complete makeover of archaic records systems, workflows, and other practices now in place.

This book points out how hospitals and doctors’ offices differ from other organizations that use IT, and explains what’s necessary to bridge the gap between clinicians and IT staff.

Get an overview of EHRs and the differences among medical settingsLearn the variety of ways institutions deal with patients and medical staff, and how workflows varyDiscover healthcare’s dependence on paper records, and the problems involved in migrating them to digital documentsUnderstand how providers charge for care, and how they get paidExplore how patients can use EHRs to participate in their own careExamine healthcare’s most pressing problem—avoidable errors—and how EHRs can both help and exacerbate it

Genres: Health Care, Technology, Business, Nonfiction, Programming, Health, Medical

250 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you work in technology and are considering working in Health IT [in the USA], you should read this book. It is a good guide to many of the challenges in Health IT, with chapters on how clinics and hospitals use information, HIPAA, interoperability (e.g., HL7), ontologies (e.g., SNOMED), why paper is still very useful for many kinds of records, billing, Meaningful Use, EMRs, etc.

There are some appropriately negative reviews at O'Reilly and at Amazon, mostly regarded the editing and some places that are obviously rushed.

I would also note that this book desperately needs an index and, for each chapter, a list of further reading and tips on how to stay up to date -- a list of major blogs and/or Twitter feeds for each area.

One last thing:

There is another reader who might check out this book: The everyday citizen. Even though the vocabulary here is technical, there are many asides regarding why the USA has such expensive IT for healthcare. Our Health IT is absurd, but there are historical and economic reasons. It is hard to imagine someone who has read this book and still thinks that healthcare in the USA can be cheaper or more efficient in its current economic situation.

[alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhere at the 80% mark this book devolved into an incomprehensible acronym soup; nonetheless I found the technical approach of actually explaining what goes on when a patient sees a doctor and the infrastructure involved from the origins to the contemporary-ish (say 2012) specs really rewarding and informative, with little snippets of self-deprecating humour as an added bonus. Much to learn from.

[Yuichiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and informative read for people in the Healthcare IT industry.
It's a good overview. I'm not sure about the push for open source but it makes sense since the author's background is in open source.
I'm not sure how useful it is for people outside of the industry or for people trying to get in the industry. I think for them the book will be confusing, but already having a lot of knowledge it is hard for me to judge.

[Te Riu Warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read

Good information on the current state of IT Software in healthcare! Very useful overview of code sets, billing, and HL7.

[Sergey Kochergan]

Historical perspective of Meaningful Use adoption.
Still relevant and valuable source of knowledge for everyone involved into Healthcare IT.

[Harry Harman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Has great ideas on how healthcare can get several orders of magnitude improvement.

[Bastian Greshake Tzovaras · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not living in the US and not working on US-targeted software the specifics of many of the regulations weren't that interesting to me. But the general problems with claims data, patient privacy etc. also apply everywhere else and it was quite interesting to read about that.

The US centric approach of the book also gave me a nice view on how the US system works in relation to the german one.

[Ileana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent review of Meaningful Use regulations and the healthcare system in US. Appropriate for healthcare professionals that want to understand more about Meaningful use and for patients involved in the system.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lives up to its title as a great guide to those aspects of healthcare, despite being marred by an unusually high number of typos for an O'Reilly book. On some pages it reaches 1+ per paragraph. This was for a second release to the first edition.

[Mat Kramer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hacking Healthcare is a great look at standards and politics in the world of healthcare IT. It gives special attention to "meaningful use", which is a concept that has real financial impact on hospitals.

[CT Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of good info about healthcare systems and the current regulations that are influencing the industry. The last 1/3 of the book started to get tedious, but overall still this is one of the only book I've come across which cover such a wide range of topics in Healthcare IT.

[Dave Peticolas · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent resource for any IT professional working in the health sector. Lots of useful facts, wisdom, and practical advice.

[Cary Ussery · Rating 3 out of 5]

good overview of health IT market/standards.

[Guru · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful, although some pieces are dated, info on how the US healthcare IT industry works - the players, the regulations, the specifications and the general goof ups.