In New England, Moving Forward in Medical Groups

I think it varies by organization and individual. I was surprised at the presentation at the MGMA Conference in October, that out of about 125 attendees, only half had yet achieved Stage 1 of meaningful use. And although ONC [the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT] is out there and MU is out there, I’m more and more surprised that the message has not gotten to the specialty community. It’s kind of a shame that the funding is almost gone for REC work. Getting medical groups to understand what’s needed is so important. And we have that link through the Comprehensive Primary Care Initiative. But our connection to the specialty groups is pretty small. We were very fortunate moving forward in New Hampshire, because we used the sub-recipient model, and a lot of organizations that received some of the REC funding have done a great job including their specialty providers in their total efforts. Our REC team is now working to expand our educational sessions to include all providers in the state to really get the understanding out there on what is expected, and required.

The challenge we all face now is what I call “practice fatigue.” In recent years, many of us in the EHR implementation field faced what was known as “provider fatigue,” which referred to the abundance of erroneous reminders and alerts that would constantly notify the provider of tests or treatments to be provided. Over time, as structured data became more prevalent, and patient records became more complete, these alerts and reminders became more relevant and actionable. Today, we are starting to see “practice fatigue.” As the structured data becomes richer and richer, more and more quality initiatives, pay for performance, and other various health plan requirements are almost becoming overwhelming at the practice level. Between acronyms like MU, ACO, eRX, PQRS, CQM, P4P, etc., it is  constant challenge to keep up with the required submissions, timing, and methods of insuring that you either receive the incentives, or avoid the penalties. Many of us have moved from helping a provider navigate an EHR to helping practices navigate the healthcare system.