Meaningful Use
What is meaningful use? What is meaningful use stage one? How does meaningful use apply to EHRs? How do you meet the requirements? The blog entries below help answer these questions as well as offer tips and resources to guide you through the process of adopting and meeting the meaningful use requirements for EHRs.
Latest Blog Posts
-
Accelerating Progress on Adoption and Meaningful Use of Health IT among Critical Access Hospitals and Small Rural Hospitals
An accident happens on a farm and a man is taken to the nearest hospital, a tiny Critical Access Hospital, the only urgent care facility in the area, an hour drive over unpaved roads from any other hospital. The medical team stabilizes the patient and then sends him by helicopter to the nearest tertiary care hospital. What if the Critical Access Hospital could electronically transmit the patient’s medical record, including his lab and imaging results, to the tertiary care hospital while the patient is still in flight? If the hospital is able to electronically transmit these records, the doctor could review her patients’ records and get a head start on saving his life before he is even wheeled through the hospital’s doors.
-
Health Information Exchange: From Standards to Practice
The recent release of the Stage 2 Meaningful Use final rule includes an important requirement: Health care providers should be able to exchange information electronically using his or her electronic health record (EHR). By 2014, a provider attesting to Meaningful Use Stage 2 should be able use their EHR to share an electronic copy of a care summary and relevant documentation with another provider, regardless of which vendor produced the EHR that either is using. In addition, patients should be able to view, download, and transmit their personal health information from an EHR to a personally controlled health record or another provider.
-
Now is the Time for Meaningful Use!
Recognizing the need to strike a balance between the urgency of modernizing our health care system and the pace of change that can be absorbed by providers and health IT vendors, CMS and ONC have implemented the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs in three stages, with each stage adding increased functionality and advanced concepts designed to improve patient care, enhance care coordination, and increase patient and family engagement. Released in July 2010, the final rules for Stage 1 focus on functionalities that support the electronic capture of data and allow patients to receive electronic copies of their own health record.