Hospitals, Health Systems Don’t Feel Prepared For Meaningful Use Stage 2
A new survey by KPMG confirms what most us would have guessed — that hospital and health system leaders aren’t that sure they’re ready to meet Meaningful Use Stage 2 requirements.
The study, which was conducted last month, found that 47 percent of hospital and health system business leaders surveyed were only somewhat confident in their readiness to meet Stage 2 requirements. Just over one-third (36 percent) said they were confident, and four percent weren’t confident at all, KPMG found. Another 11 percent said they didn’t know what their level of readiness was.
Respondents are also worried about meeting privacy and security standards included in both Stage 2 and HIPAA. Forty-seven percent of respondents were only somewhat comfortable with their organization’s ability to meet all parts of HIPAA, including the need for new annual risk assessments and protecting patient-identifiable information. Eight percent of respondents said they weren’t comfortable at all, 13 percent said they weren’t sure and 31 percent said they were comfortable, KPMG reported.
To help close the readiness gap, hospitals and health systems are bringing in outside help. Thirty percent of respondents said their organization had hired new or additional team members to help complete EMR deployment. And 22 percent said they’d hired outside contractors to get the job done.
So why are so many healthcare business leaders insecure about Stage 2? When asked to name the biggest challenge in complying with Stage 2 requirements, 29 percent cited training and change management issues.
Tied for second were lack of monitoring processes to ensure sustained demonstration of MU, and capturing relevant data as part of the clinical workflow, at 19 percent each. Twelve percent named lack of a dedicated Meaningful Use team, and 6 percent availability of appropriate certified vendor technology. Fourteen percent said “other.”
