The last few weeks there has been much discussion about the stage 2 meaningful use due to a recent press release from CMS: “The Proposed Rule for Stage 2 Meaningful Use has been Posted to the Federal Register; CMS Fact Sheet Provides Overview.” A Pediatric practice that is eligible for the incentive payments first needs to adopt a certified E.H.R. system (ONC-ATCB Certification). Then the practice starts with stage 1 meaningful use parameters. How difficult will stage 1 Meaningful Use be for your Pediatric Practice?
The answer to this question depends on how close the E.H.R. vendor was able to align the Meaningful Use requirements to the design of their system. If the system is multi-specialty or a ‘dated’ E.H.R. system or just a poor design, the disruption to meet meaningful use might be so great that the practice should either not pursue the additional incentive money or switch to an E.H.R. System that is less disruptive. Let’s look at the parameters for Stage 1 Meaningful Use. The parameters for meaningful use stage 1 include:
• Problem List
• Active Medications
• Active Medication Allergies
• Demographics
• Patient-specific Resources
• Information Updates
• Medication CPOE
• Permissible Prescriptions
• Vital Signs
• Smoking Status
• Labs
• Electronic Copy
• Clinical Summaries
• Appointment Reminders
• Transfer Medications
• Referral/Transfer Records
How does a practice meet or exceed the benchmarks? Some suggestions include leveraging the dashboard to monitor where the practice is exceeding the benchmarks and where there are gaps. During a demo of a Pediatric E.H.R. system, request the vendor to review the meaningful use dashboard/report. This should be a simple to use tool that color codes the results (green, yellow, red) so a reviewer can quickly see the strengths and areas to correct. The report should be able to be used by Identifying where in your workflow there are gaps. For example, maybe the practice is not capturing some of the key demographics such as race, ethnic group, smoking status while the patient checks in to the office. This is very easy to correct. Many of the benchmarks are fairly easy to meet as long as the system is connected and the providers are using the connections such as sending electronic prescriptions, sending/receiving laboratory orders/results to Lab Corp or Quest, sending data to the state immunization registry. Your Pediatric E.H.R. vendor should be able to provide some quick tips to your practice that will make it relatively simple to meet the meaningful use goals.
