Lumetra Insights
In the July 2009 Issue
Last March the Kaiser Family Foundation, in league with the Harvard School of Public Health and National Public Radio, conducted a survey of the American public’s attitudes and experiences with the healthcare delivery system, as it’s now constituted. Interestingly, three-quarters of the public recognizes the benefit of the use of electronic medical records (EMR) by their physicians as key to improved quality:
- 72% say it’s somewhat likely that their own doctors would do a better job coordinating their care.
- 67% say that the overall quality of care in the country would be improved.
- 58% say that fewer people would get unnecessary medical care.
- 53% say there would be fewer medical errors.
Yet when the dozen or so healthcare reform proposals that Congress is considering are examined, only a handful of them address the issue of electronic medical records and its impact on healthcare quality.
- The Administration’s proposal for reform supports the widespread use of
While a final definition won’t be settled by the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONCHIT) until later this year, ‘Meaningful Use’ refers to the criteria to be approved from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 to describe EHR system capabilities required of providers so they are able to qualify for Medicaid and Medicare incentive payments, as a result of the adoption of EHR systems. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), a component of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, provides roughly $36 billion in expenditures for health information technology infrastructure and incentive payments to physician practices adopting electronic health records (EHRs), chronic disease management systems, and other technologies. The payments will commence in 2011 and will be paid over a five-year period for physician practices that can show “Meaningful Use” of an EHR system.
The charge of defining Meaningful Use for Electronic Health Records (EHRs) has… Read More