Glaser: First 'meaningful use' definition to come next week
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Glaser, who is also vice president and chief information officer at Partners Healthcare in Boston, delivered the news during a keynote address for the 2009 Frontiers of Healthcare conference at Brown University on Monday.
In his speech, Glaser focused on how EHRs and meaningful use would be key players in healthcare reform.
"Improving care delivery and population health starts from EHR adoption, to demonstrating meaningful use in order to produce better care outcomes," he said. "If we don't get meaningful use, we won't get the care outcomes that we want."
Glaser noted that meaningful use must be actions that providers perform, such as writing e-prescriptions, documenting allergies or managing a growing population of diabetics, as well as reporting quality measures.
"These actions should be lead to improvements in the safety, quality and efficiency of care but it requires EHRs," he said.
The EHR industry has been awaiting a formal definition of meaningful use ever since the language of the HITECH Act within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) was made public. Glaser noted that the definition of meaningful use may be something that evolves over time.
"The theory is there will be this rolling definition of meaningful use that will be an evolving roadmap," he observed.
Over the next several months, the specifics of these programs and definitions are expected to be announced; however, healthcare providers and industry will finally get an inkling of the formal meaning of meaningful use when the Health IT Policy Committee work group on meaningful use plans to release its first definition next week.
While Glaser promoted the benefits of EHRs and demonstrating meaningful use, Reid Coleman, MD, medical informatics officer at R.I. healthcare provider Lifespan, one of six panel participants, stressed that in considering healthcare reform, it is important to remember that technology is not the only answer.
"It's a superb tool that if used appropriately will help advance healthcare reform. But for that tool to work, people need health information in a form that works--we need reform to get the healthcare system where it needs to be," Colman said.