Meaningful Use
The White House held a two-hour town hall meeting on Tuesday to get the pulse of how health IT is advancing nationwide, according to one panelist at the private session.
No matter how you feel about the federal incentive program to drive the adoption of healthcare it, the numbers speak for themselves. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced in early May that the federal government had paid out more than $5 billion in meaningful use incentives as of April. This money went to 93,650 physicians – $287 million to Medicare providers and $299 to Medicaid providers.
Most hospital CIOs would agree that achieving meaningful use of electronic health record systems is not for the faint-hearted. It’s a rigorous, complex program that demands difficult and bold action from even the most seasoned IT experts. Most seem ready to tackle the work, both to improve patient care – and to collect the attendant incentive money.
Catholic Health Initiatives is partnering with Orion Health to build an enterprise-wide HIE that will enable physicians and clinicians to access patient records across its 100 facilities in 19 states. Once connected, CHI plans to link to statewide HIEs in states where its 76 hospitals are located.
Jeffrey Selwyn, an internist at New Pueblo Medicine in Tucson, Ariz., is 65, but he says he's nowhere near retiring. Unlike many docs his age who are throwing in the towel due to the increased pressures on physicians to use EHRs, Selwyn is excited. He wasn't always a fan, however.
Coastal Women's Healthcare, a seven-physician practice located in a town of nearly 20,000 residents along the Southern Maine coast, is among a group of elite meaningful users of electronic health records nationwide.
No sooner had the American Hospital Association submitted its comments on the proposed rule for Stage 2 meaningful use than they came under fire for "spurious" arguments on patient access to online information.
CHIME, which represents 1,400 healthcare CIOs across the country, is asking the government for more preparation time to demonstrate Stage 2 meaningful use, hoping to make sure the reporting is just so.
The changes taking place in U.S. healthcare as a result of rapid healthcare IT adoption leave the nation's health IT chief Farzad Mostashari optimistic -- especially about improving quality, he told the audience at a meeting of the National Quality Forum Thursday, as he urged: "Keep our eyes on the prize."
Just in time to consider for comments on ONC's proposed rule on meaningful use Stage 2 (comment period ends May 7), John Loonsk, MD, makes a case for data transfer standards more functional than SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) called for in MU Stage 2 - Loonsk describes SMTP as a "dead end."