Healthcare IT Update

Seeking the Meaning of ‘Meaningful Use?’

We’ve all heard the term ‘meaningul use,’ but what exactly does it mean? The latest American Medical News tackles the ‘meaningful use’ question. To qualify for ARRA incentives, it’s not enough to simply purchase EHR. They must achieve ‘meaningful use.’ Here are some bullet-quick takeaways for HIT professionals seeking a path to enlightenment: HHS hasn’t officially defined ‘meaningful use’ in a regulation, but there’s enough language in the legislation to guess what the feds will say before their end-of-year deadline. Meaningful use involves system certification, as well as capabilities for electronic prescribing, quality reporting and information exchange. If you’re buying HIT now, the no-surprises approach is to go with a big vendor that will adapt your system to developing federal regs. Best way to get a jump on achieving meaningful use in your health care organization? Seek out those paper holdouts among your clinicians, and ‘electrify’ them. More from AMNews…

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