Hospitals Still Far From Meaningful Use of EHRs

Healthcare IT

By: OSD Staff

Published: 1/29/2010

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Survey shows hospitals have a long way to go to qualify for financial incentives.


Hospitals are "only about halfway" toward making meaningful use of certified electronic health records, which would qualify them for a piece of the $20 million in financial incentives included in last year's federal stimulus package, an industry survey shows.

Health information technology vendor CSC surveyed executives at 58 large, small and medium-sized hospitals around the country in fall 2009, before the Department of Health and Human Services issued its official definition of "meaningful use." Surveyors asked respondents to describe their readiness to comply with goals in 5 categories that would qualify them for incentives under the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act.

  • Use of a certified EHR. 93% said they were using a product certied by the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology, but other results suggest some hospitals will need to upgrade their systems to meet meaningful use requirements.

  • Meaningful use. Respondents were least prepared to show they are making meaningful use of EHRs, with less than half of hospitals using the following capabilities: computerized physician order entry (CPOE), clinical decision support, electronic medication reconciliation, nursing documentation, physician maintenance of electronic problem list and clinical data exchange with outside providers.

  • Standards adoption. Less than half of hospitals currently have a plan to convert to the ICD-10 coding system.

  • Quality management and reporting. 89% of hospitals said they report on core quality measures, but only about half of them do more than half of their reporting through an EHR system.

  • Data privacy and security. This appears to be hospitals' greatest area of readiness, with 98% having a policy to prevent breaches of protected health information.

    "The survey results indicate that hospitals in the U.S. have to make substantial progress along many dimensions to meet the requirements for incentives payments for meaningful use of EHRs," CSA concludes.

    Also recognizing the difficulty some hospitals are having with EHR adoption and meaningful use, ECRI Institute has published a guidance article on this topic in the latest issue of Health Devices. The article "clarifies what is known about the HITECH Act — including details on how incentives will work — to help hospitals make the right decisions about their EHR system," says lead author Jason Launders, MSc. "Additionally, we outline 10 key action steps that hospitals should follow to carefully select an EHR system, and do it quickly enough to receive as much incentive money as they can." To read the entire article, you can purchase the January issue of Health Devices here.

    Irene Tsikitas

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