At the iHT2 Summer Health IT Summit in Denver last week, hospital executives talked about what they must do to achieve meaningful use from EHRs. Some health organizations, such as Catholic Health Initiatives, are starting from scratch. You'd think being an early adopter would give a system a leg up, but going in fresh has its advantages.
For one, the EHR vendor market is much more mature today than it was 10 years ago. EHR vendors have improved and are continuing to improve their products. With such an intense focus from the government and industry on meaningful use, vendors are particularly keen on developing products that can help providers qualify for federal stimulus funds. A number of vendors are also promising clients they can ensure meeting meaningful use criteria. They certainly weren't making promises five years ago.
The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CHHIT) was founded in 2004 and began certifying EHR products in 2006. While some critics accused CCHIT of not being neutral and being driven by software companies' interests, having some standard certification program was needed. Now that the Dept. of Health and Human Services has opened up the field to include more certification bodies, expect chaos in the beginning but greater neutrality and a level playing field for EHR products that are not licensed software.
Early adopters had to go through a lot of resources and pain to get to where they are now with their health IT systems. Late-comers have the advantage of learning from their mistakes and deploying best practices. With the onslaught of EHR implementations in the last year, consultants have more experience under their belt to efficiently help their clients.
For early adopters who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars and many years with their health IT implementations, they still have to tweak or complete a major overhaul of their EHRs to conform to the meaningful use criteria. Depending upon the level of changes that must be made, the cost and run-up on resources could be significant.
No doubt early adopters have benefits and advantages, but for many out in the field who do not have an EHR, the environment is ripe for implementation on so many levels.
Photo by dagpeak obtained via Creative Commons license.
