What if CMS threw a meaningful use party and nobody showed up?
That was pretty much the situation on Monday, April 18. It was the day the federal Department of Health and Human Services opened the process for physicians to attest to demonstrating meaningful use of an electronic health record system so they could qualify to receive Medicare incentive payments.
Once highly anticipated, the day passed almost unnoticed. Of the estimated 95,000 physicians now using an EHR system, a mere 150 stepped forward to say they had achieved Phase 1 meaningful use measures.
What gives?
It’s not that demonstrating meaningful use is too difficult. Douglas Foreman, DO, one of those 150 physicians, exceeded the requirements – and did so within the first 90-day eligibility period.
Foreman’s (and his staff’s) commitment to his patients and to meeting the core and menu-set requirements cannot be discounted. But a decision he made years ago to use a cloud-based practice management and EHR system, CareTracker from OptumInsight, gave him a head start.
The term “cloud computing” may be a recent entry to the health IT lexicon, but the concept has been around and in use for a while. Cloud-based systems don’t require client-server hardware or that physicians install special software on each computer in their practice. They deliver advanced health IT capabilities through a simple, yet secure, Web browser-based solution. System maintenance and upgrades are included in a monthly subscription rate and delivered automatically and seamlessly.
Using the cloud, Foreman, along with thousands of other doctors, received his technology upgrade to support meaningful use on a Saturday, about a year ago. Within days, he could see how it supported both his efforts to achieve the metrics required for demonstrating meaningful use and contributed to his ability to improve patient care.
Foreman’s success offers a clear example for physicians to consider cloud-based technologies for their health IT systems. While Foreman has already received his first payment, tens of thousands of other EHR users are still waiting for their health IT vendor to get around to upgrading systems. As those vendors know, meeting that demand is can be challenging and costly.
Physicians currently shopping for an EHR system should ask: If it’s this difficult for companies with client-server and application-service provider technologies to enable their current clients to meet Phase 1 meaningful use requirements, how will they fare in preparing even more users for Phase 2 in 2013 and Phase 3 in 2015? And can they realistically support ICD-10 and future regulatory changes that require updates to their software?
Meaningful use is just one stop on a long ride of technology advancement. Health IT providers need to do much more to support their clients in demonstrating meaningful use, to make using health IT simple and affordable, and to ensure the technology really delivers when it comes to supporting better patient care and meeting future compliance requirements.
As such, the case for the cloud is clear:
· Minimum up-front investment, lower total cost of ownership and rapid ROI;
· Automatic interoperability with a wealth of systems and health industry partners; and
· Adaptability to future demands, from ICD-10 to new meaningful use rules to capabilities for meeting future performance measurement and reporting requirements
When it comes to demonstrating Meaningful Use, if we focus not on technology but on the needs to those who need to use it – physicians, nurses, and office administrators – it occurs to me that the silver lining just may be “the cloud” itself.
Russ Keene is vice president and a founder of the CareTracker solutions business at OptumInsight (formerly Ingenix). He has more than 25 years of experience with providing clinicians with health information and technology solutions, overseeing the development of cloud-based physician practice management and electronic health records systems.