Healthcare Meaningful Use
Last Updated on Saturday, 14 August 2010 21:00
Another key meeting date. Friday, August 14th marked the next look at the big question, "what is Meaningful Use?". Meaningful Use has been unveiled to physicians, hospitals and software vendors around the globe. If you haven't seen what was released, you can find all the updates by clicking here.
What did we learn? There are a couple of things that are apparent. The setting of the bar as low as it was set is likely a delicate balance between a desire to make significant changes while striving for broad acceptance. The goals are spread out from 2011 through 2015 and include criteria for data sharing and capture starting in 2011; establishing care processes, which are aimed to achieve desirable health outcomes, in 2013; and measuring and achieving those outcomes by 2015.
What's next? Certification was a big topic of the latest meeting. Insuring that physicians and practices have a way to know that their investments in technology are compliant with the government regulations. What is clear is that there may be many certification outlets for vendors, developers and even individual practices who may have custom built their applications. In theory the certification intent would allow practices to pick and choose individual pieces of functionality from different sources and still maintain an overall certification. Of course, the devil is in the details, so as this unfolds with the help of the NIST, we will all see what options are truly available.
What about you? There is tremendous debate about how the Healthcare Stimulus package will impact practices across the country. Will the funding be enough incentive to increase technology, communications and data interaction in practices? Time will tell, but I believe that until practices see longer term benefits, and a reasonable pathway to get from here to there, there will be limited initial success.
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