Providers looking to make decisions about technology will find the revised “meaningful use” definition helpful, but the implementation timeline might still be challenging, professionals say.
The federal Health Information Technology Policy Committee approved updated recommendations from its meaningful use work group during a conference. The revised definition for the meaningful use of electronic health records includes changes to computer physician order-entry criteria and speeds up the schedule for granting real-time access to patient information through personal health records. The 2011 measures are being established with a focus on data capture and sharing, according to the work group’s recommendations.
Overall, the revisions “have some nice granularity to them,” said Brian Jacobs, a critical-care physician and chief medical information officer of 230-bed Children’s National Medical Center, Washington. As the medical center finishes components of its EHR, the revised measures will serve as guidelines for what it needs to focus on, he said. The medical center is already available for the full, first-year IT adoption incentive payment under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 because it meets the 2011 criteria now. EMR