Meaningful Use

Nearly half of physician practices do not meet national standards to qualify as a medical home, according to a study led by University of Michigan Health System.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in September paid out $25 million to 1400 eligible providers and $61 million to 30 dually eligible hospitals under the meaningful use EHR incentive program, according to Robert Anthony from the CMS Office of E-Health Standards and Services.

The title of this commentary is pure jargon, but does express the issue at hand. An alternative title "The Most Important Health Policy Decision Hidden as an Obscure Health IT Technical Evaluation that You May Never Have Heard of," would have also been accurate, but is grammatically unsound and too flippant for an important subject.

Earlier this year, Healthcare IT News profiled several small EHR vendors that, in a market dominated by Epics and Cerners, were using their modest sizes to their advantage.

Even as Oklahoma and Kansas recently said ‘no thanks’ to federal money aimed at helping them with the health information technology platform needed to create health insurance exchanges, the Departments of Health and Human Services and Treasury last week awarded $185M more to drive the creation of the exchanges across the country.

Arien Malec, who coordinated the development of the Direct Project exchange protocols, is leaving the government's Office of the National Coordinator to return to the private sector.

Meaningful use expert Jim Tate has written that the Medicaid EHR incentive program reminds him of "zero entry" swimming pools: very easy to get into, with almost no barriers. Given its less stringent requirements compared to the Medicare EHR incentive program, Tate writes, he's surprised that more eligible professionals are "not jumping into this incentive program with both feet."

Rep. Renee Ellmers sent a letter Thursday to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, in which she requested that HHS consider a study of health IT's benefits and cost effectiveness, with a focus on gauging medical error rates.

This summer, pre-med students at Penn State have been coaching doctors at Mount Nittany Medical Center on how to transition from paper to electronic health records as as they strive to implement an EHR system by the end of 2011 and receive meaningful use incentives.

The government's meaningful use guidelines for healthcare reform have caught the attention of mobile health and telemedicine advocates, who say their programs are right in line with efforts to adopt IT to improve healthcare delivery.