Using HIT Meaningfully on Nashville Medical News

Using HIT Meaningfully

It's interesting how certain words or phrases quickly evolve to become an integral part of the lexicon. "Meaningful use" held no real significance in the healthcare space a decade ago. Today, every provider and administrator is aware of the phrase and its impact on HIT incentive funding and future reimbursements.

Meaningful Use Final Rule

Last month, CMS released its final rules regulating the criteria for "meaningful use" as applied to electronic health records. The American Health Information Management Association, American Medical Association, American Hospital Association, Medical Group Management Association and other professional societies immediately issued statements announcing the intent to conduct a thorough analysis of the rules to assist members in implementation. To that end, many of the organizations will conduct webinars and conference series over the coming weeks to better explain how the final rules impact individual providers, facilities and health systems.

MGMA has already scheduled, "Finding Meaning in Meaningful Use: How to Achieve it and Qualify for the Federal EHR Incentive Payments," for Aug. 5 from 2-3:30 p.m. EDT. AHA has set a conference call series, and all the major associations have created online resource centers.

For more information on HIT and to review the final rule, go online to http://healthit.hhs.gov.

Most Wired Survey Shows Progress, Continued Barriers to Adoption

Hospitals understand the importance of HIT and the benefits of its widespread adoption, yet as a field still face significant barriers to implementation according to a survey of America's Most Wired hospitals and health systems released in July.

This year's survey revealed continued progress for hospitals in patient safety initiatives:

51 percent of medication orders were done electronically at 'Most Wired' hospitals, up from 49 percent in 2009.
55 percent of 'Most Wired' hospitals match medication orders at the bedside through bar coding or radio-frequency identification, up from 49 percent last year and 23 percent five years ago.
Improvements continue to be made in using technology to share information during care transitions. New medication lists are electronically delivered to caregivers and patients 94 percent of the time when a patient is transferred within the hospital, 98 percent at discharge and 86 percent when transferred to another care setting.

"The survey results highlight that continued progress is being made but the full potential of health IT has not been met," says Rich Umbdenstock, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association.

Survey results speak to the fact that the full potential of HIT has not been met and that the use of electronic medical record functions is still not widespread, even with independent physicians who practice within hospitals. For 'Most Wired' hospitals, only 43 percent of independent physician practices have the ability to electronically document medical records, 41 percent have computerized physician order entry and 44 percent have decision support.

Full survey results appeared in the July 2010 edition of Hospitals & Health Networks. More information is available at www.hhnmag.com.

QSource Serves at Tennessee's HIT Regional Extension Center

Earlier this year, QSource was selected by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology as the state's Regional Extension Center (REC), one of 70 such entities created to provide technical assistance in effectively implementing electronic health records and associated quality improvement.

As the state's REC, QSource provides workforce development-training, group purchasing of EHRs, onsite technical assistance, office workflow redesign, health information exchange interoperability, privacy and security training and progress towards the "meaningful use" of EHRs. For more details on the REC, go online to www.qsource.org.