Meaningful Use

Six states and the District of Columbia are the latest to receive federal matching funds for state planning activities necessary to implement the electronic health record incentive program established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

As we look forward to the transformation that the stimulus will accelerate, it's worth thinking through where this change may lead us. The real question is, how will the widespread use of electronic health records change healthcare in America?

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.

A new bipartisan bill aims to ensure that multi-campus hospitals that employ and show meaningful use of health IT systems receive incentive payments that reflect the higher costs of implementation.

Depending upon whom you believe, the numbers are all over the place in terms of how much defensive medicine costs the healthcare industry and the country.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday $51 million in grants to help states launch health insurance exchanges.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will begin to make meaningful use incentive payments to eligible physicians and hospitals as early as May 2011, according to a senior CMS official, who detailed steps the agency is taking to start up the incentive program.

The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) has added three certification programs for EHRs. This is good news. Adding more specialties, namely, behavior health, dermatology and long-term and post-acute care, will help drive EHR adoption across provider groups and spread the benefits of EHRs to a greater number of patients.

The "Party of No" continues its unrelenting assault on anything the current administration does, and its latest victim is the final meaningful use criteria. Really.

For Catholic Health Initiatives, a Denver-based health system with 55 acute care hospitals across the country and no electronic health record system, the challenge of achieving meaningful use will be "keeping the wheels on the wagon, so to speak," says Evon Holladay, vice president, business intelligence.