Happy birthday, MU

Mary Stevens, Editor, CMIO

Meaningful use turned a year old this week with little to no fanfare, perhaps because facilities and physicians are busy trying to comply. As a federally-mandated and subsidized program to move the nation toward EHRs, the success of meaningful use isn’t assured, but it’s come a long way in a year. Much remains to be done; common complaints are 1) the rules as written don’t allow enough time for organizations to implement and use health IT “meaningfully,” as defined by CMS; and 2) the registration/attestation/ reporting processes need more work.

One suggestion to streamline the process: mass registration and attestation for eligible professionals, as broached at the AMDIS Physician Computer Connection Symposium on Wednesday. Medicare is looking into the possibility of batch registration, the audience was told. However, since the law requests that individual practitioners participate, not individual practices, this isn’t a simple change to make.

Nevertheless, some of the strides this 12-month-old has taken aren’t baby steps. The first round of Medicare EHR Incentive Program payments, issued in May, totaled $75 million to providers that signed up during the first weeks of the program. CMS estimated that more than 42,600 eligible professionals and hospitals had registered for the Medicare and Medicaid incentive programs, and more than 300 eligible professionals and hospitals had received payments. That was in May.

Likewise, the Medicaid incentives are moving forward. Numbers presented at the AMDIS event, included:

• 21 states have launched programs as of July 4
• 14 states made payments as of June 30
• Through June, 11,030 eligible professionals successfully registered and 2,262 were paid (total payment: $47.7 million)
• 26 Medicaid-eligible hospitals registered and six paid (total payment: $12.7 million)
• 1,529 dually eligible hospitals registered and 133 paid (total payment: $105.8 million)

Organizations hoping to attain meaningful use might want to put a physician in charge: top-performing hospitals are typically ones headed by a physician rather than a manager, according to a study in Social Science and Medicine.

The findings run counter to the trend of putting generally trained managers—not those with a medical degree—at the helm of hospitals, according to study author Amanda Goodall, PhD.

Goodall traced the professional background and personal history of leaders at 300 prominent U.S. hospitals. Her work showed that quality scores among those hospitals were approximately 25 percent higher in physician-run institutions than in non-physician-run hospitals.

What changes will Year 2 of meaningful use bring to your hospital? Let me know at mstevens@trimedmedia.com.

Mary Stevens, Editor