Finding Meaning in Meaningful Use

In a recent article published in Healthcare IT News, 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.

"CMS will open registration for the incentive program in January," said senior CMS official Karen Trudel.  "To begin receiving payments, healthcare providers must verify that they have demonstrated meaningful use of certified electronic health records for 90 days," she added.

Hospitals were first tasked with the burden of sifting through over 800 pages of Meaningful Use requirements.  Next, they were faced with the additional barriers that accompany implementing and satisfying the requirements of clinical decision support tools such as CPOE, Drug Interaction Checking, Dose Rang Checking and Duplicate Therapy.   The bar is high...but the reward is great.

Getting it right is important because CMS will pay out billions of dollars in incentives called for in the HITECH Act over the next several years.  Trudel goes on to explain, "The pressure is on...We are now working toward making all of this a reality and we have only about six months to do it."

Meanwhile, the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) is establishing a temporary electronic health record certification program and hopes to have multiple organizations ready to certify EHR products, including clinical decision support tools, to eliminate "bottlenecks" in the process.

Healthcare providers do not have to inform CMS what certified EHR system they are using until they submit information verifying they have met meaningful use requirements. 

Let's face it.  With billions of dollars on the line, meaningful use will drive hospitals to the next generation of healthcare.  And that's the reality.