In the 2004 State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush stated “within the next 10 years, Electronic Health Records (EHRs) will ensure that complete health care information is available for most Americans at the time and place of care (U.S. Government)”. In order to encourage the widespread implementation of EHRs and to overcome the financial barrier to doing so, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009 set aside $27 billion in incentives to be distributed over a ten-year period for hospitals and healthcare providers to adopt the meaningful use of EHRs (Encinosa, 2013). In 2011, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) implemented the Meaningful Use (MU) Incentive Program. In order to qualify for incentive payments under MU, providers must attest to meeting specific quality measures thresholds each year consisting of three stages with increasing requirement at each stage. The Meaningful Use Incentive program was designed to ensure that EHRs are implemented and used in the appropriate manner by increasing healthcare quality while lowering healthcare costs. However, it is important to discern if the Meaningful Use incentive program is working appropriately because in 2015, if Medicare eligible providers (EPs) do not switch to EHRs, they will be penalized by reducing their fee schedule by 1.5% and by 2% for subsequent years (CMS, 2014). On a broader note, this topic is also important for healthcare administrators that have not yet invested in an EHR because if the Meaningful Use Incentive Program works in such a way that reduces cost and improves patient care, the implementation of an EHR should do the same as long as the MU program is followed. Furthermore, provi... ... middle of paper ... .../Payment-Adjustment-Information.html Encinosa, W. E., & Jaeyong, B. (2013). Will Meaningful Use Electronic Medical Records Reduce Hospital Costs?. American Journal Of Managed Care, 19eSP19-eSP25. Furukawa, M. (2011). Electronic medical records and efficiency and productivity during office visits. American Journal of Managed Care, 17(4), 296-303. Government. (n.d.). A new generation of American innovation. The White House. Retrieved May 1, 2014, from http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/technology/economic_policy200404/chap3.html Medical Mutual. (n.d.). U.S. healthcare costs: report on healthcare spending. Medical Mutual. Tjia, J., Field, T. S., Fischer, S. H., Gagne, S. J., Peterson, D. J., Garber, L. D., & Gurwitz, J. H. (2011). Quality measurement of medication monitoring in the "Meaningful use" era. American Journal Of Managed Care, 17(9), 633-637.
The federal government has taken a stance to standardized care by creating incentive programs that are mandated under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) of 2009. This act encourages healthcare providers and healthcare institutions to adopt Meaningful use in order to receive incentives from Medicare and Medicaid. Meaningful use is the adoption of a certified health record system that acquires or obtains specified objectives about a patient. The objectives or measures are considered gold standard practices with the EHR system. Examples of the measures include data entry of vital signs, demographics, allergies, entering medical orders, providing patients with electronic copies of their records, and many more pertinent information regarding the patient (Friedman et al, 2013, p.1560).
Hundreds of thousands of physicians have already seen these benefits in their clinical practice.” This is proof that in Canada we should continue to introduce electronic health records and help smaller practises with policies to help with funding. The benefits of electronic health records can drastically improve the quality of health and health
Meaningful Use and the EHR Many new technologies are being used in health organizations across the nation, which are being utilized to help improve the quality of health care. Electronic Health Records (EHRs) play a critical role in improving access, quality and efficiency of healthcare ("Electronic health records," 2014). In order to assist in expanding the use of EHR’s, in 2011 the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), instituted an EHR incentive program called the Meaningful Use Program. This program was instituted to encourage and expand the use of the HER, by providing health professionals and health organizations yearly incentive payments when they demonstrate meaningful use of the EHR ("Medicare and Medicaid," 2014).
“Meaningful Use” implemented in July, 2010, set criteria’s for physicians and hospitals to adhere, in order to qualify for certain financial incentives and to be deemed meaningful users (MU) of the EMR. Meaningful use in healthcare is defined as using certified electronic health record to improve quality, safety, efficiency, and reduce mortality and morbidity. There are 3 stages of meaningful use implementation. The requirements for the 3 stages are spread out over a period of 5 years. MU mandates that physicians meet 15 core objectives and hospitals meet 14 core objectives (Hoffman & Pudgurski, 2011). The goal is to in-cooperate the patient and family in their health, empower autonomy to make decisions while improving care in all population.
Unfortunately, the quality of health care in America is flawed. Information technology (IT) offers the potential to address the industry’s most pressing dilemmas: care fragmentation, medical errors, and rising costs. The leading example of this is the electronic health record (EHR). An EHR, as explained by HealthIT.gov (n.d.), is a digital version of a patient’s paper chart. It includes, but is not limited to, medical history, diagnoses, medications, and treatment plans. The EHR, then, serves as a resource that aids clinicians in decision-making by providing comprehensive patient information.
Meaningful Use (MU) is defined as a healthcare provider’s usage of certified EHR technology in a way that can be measured largely in quality and in quantity. By establishing meaningful use using an Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) certified EHR program; healthcare providers can collect stimulus money, as arranged through the HITECH act of 2009. MU is designed to improve healthcare quality, efficiency, safety, and help to reduce health disparities. Also this helps to maintain privacy and security of patient healthcare information. (EHR Incentives & Certification, 2014)
This paper will identify the use of Electronic Health Records and how nursing plays an important role. Emerging in the early 2000’s, utilizing Electronic Health Records have quickly become a part of normal practice. An EHR could help prevent dangerous medical mistakes, decrease in medical costs, and an overall improvement in medical care. Patients are often taking multiple medications, forget to mention important procedures/diagnoses to providers, and at times fail to follow up with providers. Maintaining an EHR could help tack data, identify patients who are due for preventative screenings and visits, monitor VS, & improve overall quality of care in a practice. Nurse informaticists play an important role in the adaptation, utilization, and functionality of an EHR. The impact the EHR could have on a general population is invaluable; therefore, it needs special attention from a trained professional.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was created to stimulate medicine and adopt as well as “meaningfully” use electronic health records within and across health organizations. This was to help improve patient outcomes and accountability, aid in coordination of care, promote effective health management across organizations, and align incentives with good patient and population outcomes.
In 2009 President Obama, through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, pledged to provide incentives to the nation’s physicians and hospitals to convert to an electronic healthcare system in attempt to improve the quality of care and reduce cost (Freudenheim, 2010). By converting to an electronic system, we have the opportunity for improved communication between all healthcare providers and decreased cost to our healthcare system. The goal is to improve communication across all aspects of the service chain (Horan, Botts & Burkhard, 2010). Almost two years later, the conversion progress continues to be slow. Only one in four physician’s offices, mostly large groups, have implemented the electronic record system (Freudenheim, 2010).
This technology fits well with as industry looking for new care models to help alleviate the financial and physical burden created by chronic diseases. Mobile health technology is allowing for a shift of care from the acute-care, hospital setting to rehabilitation centers, patient residences, and skilled nursing facilities. This becomes crucial as CMS expanded its Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program to include five conditions: chronic lung problems, heart failure, pneumonia, heart attack, and elective hip and knee replacements (Rau, 2014a). Hospitals can be penalized up to three percent of Medicare payments due to hospital readmissions that occur within thirty days of discharge. According to Rau (2014b), 18 percent of Medicare patients in 2013 were readmitted within a 30 day period costing Medicare roughly $26 billion, $17 billion of which comes from avoidable readmissions. The financial strain associated with chronic illness has catalyzed a movement toward using technology in a meaningful manner to improve health quality. Meaningful use is forcing entities to use certified electronic health records (EHR) in order to improve care coordination and quality. mHealth serves an extension of the electronic record enabling remote data capture that can be monitored in order to improve health outcomes and prevent
Health care must be fully accountable for quality and the patient experience is simply the patient's perception of quality. Society should question and debate on how healthcare organizations should show improvement for consumers. This can help organizations create reliable health coverage cost and evaluate medical performances for families and individuals in the future. Physicians and organizations are now evaluating patients with collection of electronic data to improve a patient’s...
Electronic medical records not only effect health care professionals, but the patients of those health care providers as well. However, nurses spend the most time directly using electronic medical records to access patient date and chart. Nurses now learn to chart, record data, and interact with other health care providers electronically. Many assume that electronic means efficient, and the stories of many nurses both agree, and disagree. Myra Davis-Alston, a nurse from Las Vegas, NV, says that she “[likes] the immediate access to patient progress notes from all care providers, and the ability to review cumulative lab values and radiology reports” (Eisenberg, 2010, p. 9). This form of record keeping provides health care professionals with convenient access to patient notes, vital signs, and test results from multiple providers comprised into one central location. They also have the ability to make patients more involved in their own care (Ross, 2009). With the advancement in efficiency, also comes the reduction of costs by not printing countless paper records, and in turn, lowers health care
Meaningful use is the fifth stage of implementing EHR. Meaningful use refers to using the health records in a purposeful way to achieve the goals patient focused healthcare, population health, improving quality, and safety in healthcare. There are three stages of meaningful use which is regulated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The first is to make sure you actually have an electronic record system, the second stage is providing patients with access to their own medical records with care coordination, and the third is improving healthcare outcomes (How to Implement EHRs). This fifth stage is an incentive program and is such an important part of the plan that Medicare can actually penalize clinicians and hospitals
Another advantage is space and time saving benefit of a digital record which eventually increases patients-served-per-day for enhanced productivity. Reduced transcript services costs, advanced electronic prescriptions, and more precise and accurate patient billing procedures are other plus points associated with modern digital system of health record. The exhibition of PHM’s accomplishment is evident from this study, it is found that computerized physician reminders accelerate the use of influenza and pneumococcal vaccinations from just about 0% to 35%. Other researches have also revealed that computerized reminders have expanded observance to immunization schedules and
The purpose of the Electronic Health Record is to provide a comprehensive, standardized and universal digital version of a patient 's health records. The availability of a patient 's digital health record provides health information and data for critical thinking and evidence based decision-making, aggregates patient data for quality assurance and research. The Electronic Health Record has been, "identified as a strategy for effectively and efficiently coordinating and maintaining documentation of patients health histories and as a secure method of providing more informed clinical decision making" (MNA, 2006).