by
Olga Deshchenko, DOTmed News Reporter | February 11, 2011
From the January/February 2011 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
With the wide range of products and services, many hospitals have the necessary tools to reach stage one measures, but some are finding that with meaningful use, the devil’s in the details.
Stage one: are you ready?
With the 2011 deadline for stage one meaningful use incentives inching closer, there’s a lingering question about hospitals’ readiness to meet the objectives. In a June 2010 survey of 120 chief information officers by PricewaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute, eight in 10 hospital CIOs said they were concerned or very concerned about meeting meaningful use requirements. CIOs said they were worried about the lack of clarity on final meaningful use rules and a shortage of qualified staff to implement the technology.
In November 2010, the percentage of CIOs who expected their facilities to qualify for stage one meaningful use incentives dropped by half in comparison to previous estimates, according to a survey by the College of Health Information Management Executives. Just 15 out of 191 of those who were surveyed said they were confident about qualifying for the incentives in the first half of federal fiscal year 2011.
And yet, survey data released earlier this year show a significant number of hospitals and physicians intend to adopt EHRs and qualify for the incentives. Four-fifths of the nation’s hospitals and 41 percent of office-based physicians plan to get on the HIT train, according to ONC data. About two-thirds of hospitals said they will apply for stage one incentives in 2011-2012.
At this point, it may not be a matter of technology, but time. “If organizations are looking at achieving meaningful use within the time allotted for stage one, many of the hospitals that are mature will certainly make that threshold,” says Edna Boone, director of healthcare information systems with the Healthcare Information and Management System Society. “Most organizations already have goals that align with meaningful use within their strategic plans and IT plans. The stretch is really in the timing of achieving these goals in order to achieve the incentives.”
CPOE adoption within reach
Depending on facility size and resource availability, providers will run into different challenges on their road to demonstrating meaningful use. In recent surveys, many hospital CIOs expressed concerns about computerized provider order entry, a core measure of stage one objectives. In order to demonstrate CPOE for the first stage, more than 30 percent of all unique admitted patients with a minimum of one medication in their list must have at least one medication order entered using CPOE.
