Meaningful Use and EHR Technologies

Meaningful Use and EHR Technologies, Explain the stages of meaningful use and explain how it encourages providers to adopt EHR technologies. Be sure to include barriers to implementation and any governmental protections.

In two different paragraph give your personal opinion to  Felita Daniel-sacagiu  and   Samantha Thompson

Samantha Thompson

Hello everyone, I hope you are staying safe out there. It’s crazy times we are living in but I feel like as someone in healthcare, this is what I was born for. Ok so on to our discussion. EHR or Electronic Health Records is a system that is used to keep patient records electronically. The difference between an EHR system and an Electronic Medical Record, or EMR. is that EHR can be used nationally and with other entities of care. EMR is less efficient with the fact that it only works in house and that office can only communicate with it’s own personal.

Meaningful Use is part of The Stimulus bill signed by President Obama on Feb 17, 2009.  The HITECH act came from this which encourages Providers to use a certified EHR and use it meaningfully, hence the name Meaningful Use. There is a financial incentive as well for the use of this with $34 billion dollars to invest into those who use the EHR system effectively. So who do Providers do that? Through two lists of objectives that the government has come up with. This includes a Core set and a Menu set of objectives. The Core set is made up of 15 nonnegotiable objectives and the Menu set is made up of 10 objectives in which the provider must do 5 of them. This makes for a total of 20 objectives and if the provider fails to meet one of them, they will not qualify for their part of that $34 billion. Each provider can make up to $44,000 for Medicare patients seen and $64,000 for Medicaid. If an EHR system is not in place, there can be penalties instead of rewards up to $1.5 million from the government at the end of the year.

References:

US Dept of Health and Human Services, (2009) HITECH. Retrieved from: https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/special-topics/hitech-act-enforcement-interim-final-rule/index.html

Felita Daniel-sacagiu

Electronic health record (EHR) systems are now a major topic in health care. The use of EHRs in the healthcare field impacts the communication and management of laboratory information in patient care, particularly reporting of laboratory results and test order management.  More pointedly, recent federal legislature and resultant regulations that aim to promote the use of EHRs promise to have substantial direct and indirect implications for laboratories and for pathology practice (Henricks, 2011).

Meaningful use is defined as the use of certified EHR technology in a meaningful manner i.e. guaranteeing that the certified EHR technology connects in a manner that provides for the electronic exchange of health information to improve patient’s quality of care.

EHRs are crucial to support goals the federal government has identified in order to improved healthcare.  Those goals include, but are not limited to:

• Improve quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare and reduce health disparities
• Connect and engage patients and families in their healthcare
• Improve coordination of healthcare
• Enhance population and public health
• Maintain privacy and protect health information
• Decrease costs

Barriers to implementation and any governmental protections

• Cost constraints
• Technical limitations
• Standardizations limits
• Organizational policy restraints
• Patient action/behavior

Henricks, Walter. “Meaningful Use” of Electronic Health Records and its Relevance to Laboratories and

Pathologists.” Journal of Pathology Informatics, Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd, 11 Feb.

2011, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049251.

“Introduction.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,

9 Sept. 2019, https://www.cdc.gov/ehrmeaningfuluse/introduction.html. Get Top Grade essays Now