Meaningful Use

On Jan. 14, the Chicago-based American Medical Association (AMA) submitted formal comments to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), in response to the release of the Health IT Policy Committee’s proposal for Stage 3 of meaningful use under the HITECH Act.

Stage 2 of meaningful use raises the bar in terms of how and when hospitals and physician groups must make patient data available.

Hospitals and health systems are only somewhat confident in their organization’s level of readiness to meet meaningful use Stage 2 standards for electronic health records (EHR), and most see training and change management efforts as their biggest compliance challenge, according to the results of a poll conducted by KPMG LLP. The results reflect responses from more than 140 hospital and health system administrators.

According to a report from the federal Government Accountability Organization (GAO), acute care hospitals were 1.7 times more likely and children's hospitals were 1.6 times more likely to have been awarded a Medicaid EHR incentive payment for 2011, when compared to critical access hospitals. The report compared the various hospitals that have received meaningful use payments in 2011, finding overall 1,964 hospitals and 45,962 professionals were awarded a total of approximately $2.7 billion in Medicaid EHR incentive payments for 2011.

Among key meaningful use challenges for physician offices are vendor product nuances, workflows that must be redesigned, and staff roles that needed to be redefined.