Providers lagging in IT to meet meaningful use

Most hospitals and hospital-based health care providers have their work cut out for them when it comes to meeting meaningful use requirements of EMRs, according to a new report.

In the report, “The State of U.S. Hospitals Relative to Achieving Meaningful Use Measurements,” HIMSS Analytics compared the current state of hospital capabilities according to its own seven-stage EMR adoption model, which it calls EMRAM, and identified a number of implementation gaps.

According to the study, only the first stage of EMRAM—which calls for installation of laboratory, radiology and pharmacy information systems—can be easily achieved by most hospitals.

After that, the situation becomes more dire. For example, the clinical decision support systems that are required under meaningful use have so far been implemented by less than a quarter of the health care market.

And the measurements become tougher with each year. For example, in 2013, orders will need to be tracked through a computer physician order entry (CPOE) system, an EMRAM stage 4 capability.

The report concludes that while hospitals that have achieved the EMRAM stage 3 capabilities are well positioned to meet 2011 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) requirements, by 2015 they will need to have the majority of their physicians using stage 6 applications, with completely electronic medical records in place.

To date, only 61 hospitals have reached Stage 6, and only15 hospitals have achieved Stage 7.

Only those organizations that understand meaningful use requirements will survive the upcoming healthcare delivery transformation, according to the study—and that will require the careful architecting of IT solutions.

We can help you choose the right EMR and support structure—and we can help you keep your software up-to-date in accordance with government guidelines. Contact us for details.

Related articles:

• EMRAM
• EMRAM and meaningful use: crossing the EMR chasm