Sure, EMR use is picking up rapidly across the U.S. But is the process going well? Maybe not, according to a new poll released by audit, tax and advisory services firm KPMG LLP.
According to KPMG, 48 percent of hospitals and health system respondents said they were confident they could reach Stage 1 Meaningful Use requirements. Meanwhile, 39 percent were somewhat confident and 3 percent weren’t confident at all.
Perhaps most strikingly, 10 percent didn’t know what their level of readiness was. (If I were a health system CEO, those folks would bother me the most; not even knowing is a dangerous state of affairs.)
So what’s holding them back?
* 25 percent said they just aren’t sure how to demonstrate MU
* 20 percent said training and change management were concerns
* 18 percent said they weren’t confident they could capture relevant data from clinical workflows
* 12 percent weren’t ready since they don’t have a Meaningful Use team in place
* Six percent said they didn’t have the right certified technology yet
It’s not that the hospitals IT folks are sitting on their hands. Researchers at KPMG found that 71 percent of the hospitals and health systems were more than 50 percent of the way to finalizing EMR adoption. But that apparently hasn’t been enough to reassure them that they’re on the mark where Meaningful Use is concerned.
The whole thing sounds like a trainwreck waiting to happen, in my view. I say, let’s pause a bit and really take these numbers seriously — providers are struggling out there! — before hospitals waste more money and time messing around and feeling clobbered.
I am finding CAH are having difficulty especially in the MU Stage 1 90 day attestation of VTE and Stroke. This is a huge undertaking if data cannot be submitted electronically for the VTE and Stroke Measures. Typically a CAH has only a few Core Measure Abstractionists which are dealing with small volumes of data to be be abstracted as they can sample. For the 90 Day Attestation, the CAH is challenged with a major gap in staffing of experienced abstractors in this area. My organization which typically assisted with interim or ongoing staffing for Core Measure Abstraction has now assisted many CAHs with the 90 day attestation for VTE and Stroke with 24 credentialed and experienced abstractors now working on 90 day attestations. This is just one area on MU compliance, but it is the one that my organization has truly been involved with assisting CAHs. Obviously there are other areas.