Overcoming challenges to achieving meaningful use: insights from hospitals that successfully received Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services payments in 2011

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Overcoming challenges to achieving meaningful use: insights from hospitals that successfully received Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services payments in 2011

Introduction

A study was done that compared two hospitals, one that received payments for meaningful use (MU) and one that did not. The hospitals received payment based on the challenges they experienced the year before. The Health Information for Economic and Clinical Health of 2009 rewards healthcare providers that adopt MU electronic health records (EHR). The purpose of this is to improve quality while decreasing health care costs. The purpose of this study was to compare the challenges that were self-reported among hospitals that did not receive MU reward payments. Understanding these challenges will aid in the future success of the MU reward program. [1]

Methods

The study, which took place in 2001, chose to include hospitals that were potentially eligible for MU incentives. The data used in this study came from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data that identified potentially hospitals that were eligible for receiving Medicare MU incentives, the American Hospital Association’s (AHA) annual survey of hospitals, as well as the AHA’s 2010 EHR adoption survey.

Results

313 hospitals out of the 2,475 hospitals sampled received a MU payment in 2011. The other 2,162 did not revived payment, however, did show interest in participation in the MU program. The potential challenges to MU that were self reported by the hospitals include the following:

  • Implement clinical decision support (CDS) rules
  • Implement computerized provider order entry (CPOE) a specified level of sophistication
  • Exchange clinical information with other providers
  • Perform medication reconciliation across settings of care
  • Give patient’s access to their data in electronic form
  • Generate problem lists used codified datasets
  • Generate numerator and denominator data for quality reporting directly from EHR

Conclusions

One of the goals of the MU incentive program was to help hospitals with the financial barriers that occur with EHR adoption. As a result of more research being conducted it has been found that other barriers to EHR adoption exist. Policy makers of the MU program should take these other challenges into consideration in order to increase the success of this program.

References

  1. Overcoming challenges to achieving meaningful use: insights from hospitals that successfully received Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services payments in 2011 Christopher A Harle, Timothy R Huerta, Eric W Ford, Mark L Diana, Nir Menachemi Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association Mar 2013, 20 (2) 233-237 Retrieved on October 13, 2015, from http://jamia.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/2/233 DOI: 10.1136/amiajnl-2012-001142