A new white paper from the research firm HIMSS Analytics examines market gaps that hospitals must address to achieve the forthcoming meaningful use of electronic health records requirements of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
"We created the mapping to provide insights for hospitals to help assess their EMR environments and strategies relative to current ARRA meaningful use measurements for 2011, 2013, and 2015," says Mike Davis, author of the white paper and executive vice president at the Chicago-based firm. "It provides a market assessment of adoption of some of the more sophisticated EMR applications related to where we believe these applications will impact 2011, 2013, and 2015 measurements."
The paper focuses on meaningful use goals with specific metrics, such as:
- Improving quality, safety and efficiency;
- Reducing health disparities;
- Engaging patients and families;
- Improving care coordination;
- Improving population and public health; and
- Ensuring adequate privacy and security of health information.
The paper concludes that:
- Hospitals having achieved Stage 3 of HIMSS Analytics' seven stages of EMR adoption are well positioned to meet the majority of 2011 measures, "if they have implemented the application at this stage across all inpatient nursing services;"
- By 2013, hospitals must have CPOE implemented with a majority of physicians using the system, so they will need to be at Stage 4; and
- Various measurements in 2015 will require Stage 6 or 7 functions.
This article can also be found on HealthDataManagement.com.
Joseph Goedert is news editor at Health Data Management.
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