CHIME members advise orderly transition to Stage 2 MU at federal hearing

College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) members called for a safe and smooth transition to Meaningful Use (MU) Stage 2 during a joint hearing of two federal advisory committees in Washington, D.C.

At the hearings, CIOs representing facilities in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia reported on MU Stage 1 implementation and Stage 2 readiness and proposed policies for Stage 3, according to a CHIME release.

The four CIOs reported progress in EHR adoption in Stage 2, but described common challenges surrounding Stage 2, including meeting objectives related to transitions of care, patient portals and clinical quality measures (CQMs).

“All of the objectives listed as challenges require significant work to implement after upgrading to 2014 certified software,” Pamela McNutt, Sr. vice president and CIO at Dallas-based Methodist Health System, said. “For example, after delivery of the patient portal we will have to map data elements from the patient record and clinical staff will need to ensure that the data is representing accurately.”

Tom Pagano, CIO at HCA Capital Division in Richmond, and Rodney Dykehouse, CIO at Penn State Hershey Medical Center and College of Medicine, further explained that vendors are forced into selecting a specific workflow to certify, and providers often find they must either ask for modifications to their reporting logic or completely change an existing workflow. 

“We’re not opposed to changing workflow if it is a better workflow, but we are opposed to changing a workflow only to ‘prove’ that we’re meeting the intent of the requirement,” Dykehouse said, according to the release.

The hearing follows a request from CHIME to extend the Stage 2 compliance deadline by one year.