From the April 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


HCBN: What was your biggest hurdle when meeting Stage 2 meaningful use requirements?


Kumar Chatani, executive vice president and chief information officer of Mount Sinai Health System: One of our biggest hurdles was managing through vendor delays in delivering 2014 certified systems to support our Stage 2 meaningful use requirements, given the aggressive time frame in which to implement systems and put supporting operational workflows in place. Another hurdle was related to information exchange due to the varying capabilities and readiness of providers in the community to exchange health information.


Steve Hess: University of Colorado Health has successfully attested to Meaningful Use Stage 2 for both eligible hospital and provider. The biggest hurdles were on the transitions of care requirement on the hospital side and patient reminders on the provider side. Both of these requirements are not completely under the hospital and provider control and require greater visibility and process changes. We were successful on both aspects, but it wasn’t trivial to exceed the threshold requirements.

HCBN: How are hospitals doing with Stage 2 MU requirements?


Rod Piechowski, senior director of health information systems at HIMSS. Last fall, it looked like the numbers weren’t as good as they wanted them to be. But the numbers that came out in January showed that 77 percent of eligible hospitals have attested to Stage 2, and 13 percent of eligible physicians have attested.

The numbers are definitely up. You can never say that all hospitals and all physicians will attest, but it looks like the numbers are better. They are also making some changes this year that should make it a lot easier to attest to Stage 2. They are going to realign the hospital reporting periods to the calendar year so it’s not according to the federal fiscal year anymore.

April 2015 Magazine

Read more stories from the April 2015 issue

More Magazine Features

Primary Care Homepage