Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. To Recognize Its Top Doctors Who Incorporate 'Meaningful Use' of Health Information Technology in Their Practices

NEW YORK, July 14 /PRNewswire/ -- With the Obama Administration's announcement of up to $27 billion in stimulus funds to incent doctors and hospitals to adopt health information technology, the health care landscape is quickly changing.  By 2014, all Americans will benefit from electronic health records (EHRs). Patients will expect their doctors to write, check, and transmit their prescriptions.  Hospitals will employ private and secure networks to transmit health information to ensure that it is available to clinicians when they need it -- at the point of care. Along with health reform, the rapid "wiring" of American health care represents an opportunity to fundamentally restructure health care delivery.   Far from simply digitizing paper-based work, health information technology will enable new means of improving the quality of care.  Many of these potential improvements are already apparent; others are yet to be uncovered.  The work of doctors and the role of patients will change accordingly, making way for health care delivery that more robustly collects and responds to data—and that engages patients as partners in care, not merely as recipients of it.

In recognition of this important forthcoming change in American health care delivery, Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. has announced that will develop standards to begin to recognize physicians who have made the decision to incorporate "Meaningful Use" of health information technology in their practices in their listings of Top Doctors, starting in 2011.

As an organization that has long been committed to enabling consumers to find and access the highest level of medical care, Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. will be identifying and recognizing those physicians among its nearly 30,000 Top Doctors who are involved in pursuit of "Meaningful Use" of health information technology.  "We are delighted to lend our energies to the Office of the National Coordinator-Health Information Technology, Department of Health and Human Services to the extent that we can," said John J. Connolly, President and CEO.  "Physicians are critical to these efforts to create new means of improving the quality, efficiency and patient-centeredness of care, and those who are at the forefront of implementing these new technologies deserve to be recognized for their commitment to clinical excellence. Castle Connolly Top Doctors are in a pivotal position to serve as both role models for their colleagues and key opinion leaders for their hospitals," said Dr. Connolly, "thereby facilitating the broad-based adoption of these technologies."

Castle Connolly's efforts will be coordinated in conjunction with the recently released (July 13, 2010) final rules announced by U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for meaningful use of EHRs by both healthcare providers and hospitals.  These final rules reflect greater flexibility regarding meeting and reporting of certain objectives for demonstrating "meaningful use." Objectives are divided into both a "core group" of required objectives and a "menu set" from which providers and hospitals may choose to defer some as they implement the standards in a step-wise, three stage process over the course of the next several years.  

In an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine  (NEJM),  July 13, 2010, Dr. David Blumenthal, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (HHS) and Marilyn Tavenner, Principal Deputy Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) describe aspects of the final rules to support meaningful use, making the case for the ways in which EHRs support improved health care, helping clinicians to make better clinical decisions while also avoiding preventable errors.  "We are delighted to play a part in this process," said Dr. Connolly, "and would encourage all physicians to read this important article in NEJM.  We also would strongly suggest they read the moving article in that same NEJM issue written by Surgeon–General Dr. Regina Benjamin, a staunch advocate and champion of EHRs, who has also been a Castle Connolly Top Doctor for years until assuming her role as Surgeon–General." Dr. Benjamin's first-person piece details her own experiences as a dedicated primary care physician in the Gulf Coast of Alabama, and how both Hurricane Georges (1998) and Katrina (2005) and later a fire at her clinic led her ultimately to realize the need for and the benefits of transitioning EHRs.

About Castle Connolly Medical Ltd.

Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. is America's trusted source for identifying top doctors. Castle Connolly has been empowering consumers by helping them find information about quality healthcare for nearly 20 years as a leading healthcare research, information, and publishing company.  Castle Connolly works with over 40 national and regional publications, such as Redbook, Ladies Home Journal, Men's Health, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago to provide the information for their annual "Top Doctors" features. The company also publishes the consumer guides America's Top Doctors®, America's Top Doctors® for Cancer, Top Doctors: New York Metro Area, The Best in Senior Living & Eldercare Options and The ABCs of HMOs. Founded in 1991 by John K. Castle (Chairman) and John J. Connolly, Ed.D. (President and CEO), who served as board chairman, and president and CEO of New York Medical College, respectively, its mission is to help consumers find the best healthcare. They achieve that mission through their consumer guides, their website and various consumer and business-oriented print and online partnerships. Under the direction of its physician-lead research team, Castle Connolly surveys tens of thousands of physicians and hospital executives in order to identify, screen and, ultimately, select those physicians regarded by their peers as leaders in their specialties and for specific diseases and techniques. Castle Connolly's valuable top doctors information can also be accessed online at its Website, www.castleconnolly.com and on other affiliated websites.  Castle Connolly can also be found at www.facebook.com/TopDoctors and www.twitter.com/castleconnolly.

For further information, contact please call William Liss-Levinson, Ph.D., Vice President Chief Strategy & Operations Officer at (212) 367-8400 ext. 14 or via email [email protected].  Visit the company's website at www.castleconnolly.com.

Media Contact: Laurenn Wolpoff, CJP Communications at  212.279.3115, ext. 219

917.518.9011(mobile) or [email protected]

To read Secretary Sebelius' press release, visit http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2010pres/07/20100713a.html.

To read the New England Journal of Medicine articles referred to above, visit, http://healthcarereform.nejm.org/?p=3732  for the article by Dr. Blumenthal and Ms. Tavenner,  and http://healthcarereform.nejm.org/?p=3736 for the article written by Surgeon-General Dr. Benjamin.

SOURCE Castle Connolly Medical Ltd.