There was recently a forum in Washington with hearings about what should be defined as meaningful use.
While what was at the hearing is no guarantee of what HHS will eventually define as meaningful use, a number of things came out of the forum that will likely be part of the definition.
1 - Being able to communicate with a registry. Interoperability and the ability to send and receive data to a central hub such as a HIE will be central to meaningful use,
2 - PHR’s there is a strong feeling that PHR’s empower patients and improve patient care. the ability to send data to PHR’s either directly or through the registry will likely be discussed at a higher level
There was also discussion about tiers of sophistication that would be required of the EHR software. With different definitions of Meaningful use depending upon the environment where the EHR is utilized.
GE and Allscripts beat their chests, Fred Trotter presented the case for OpenSource, focusing upon WorldVistA.
It is difficult to look into a crystal ball and determine exactly how Meaningful Use will be defined but these were themes that were prevalent in testimony from experts from many different aspects of the health care field.
Hold on to your hat it is going to be a wild ride.
This is a subset of my post on the topic to Fred and the OpenHealth forum …
The "meaningful use" of an EMR system is that which results in sick people becoming healthy. That can only happen when the method of communicating that data are transparent and obvious to all, including the patient. The data about a persons health, ultimately, belongs to the person not the provider, insurer, nor the government.
It’s definitely interesting. The other outstanding definition is EHR certification. Eligibility for the HITECH Act’s Medicaid and Medicare incentives requires meaningful use of a "certified" EHR. Rumor has it that HHS will require incentive eligible EHRs to be CCHIT certified. The CCHIT cert is extremely comprehensive and costs ~$25K. It expires after 3 years and costs $3K/year to maintain. Requiring CCHIT certification would be a major blow to open source EHRs unless their user communities can come up with the necessary dollars which is not likely. The large, commercial EHR vendors whose products are already CCHIT certified (e.g., Cerner, AllScripts, GE, etc.) would like nothing better and are probably lobbying hard for CCHIT. I hope HHS does the right thing and finds a way to allow open source EHRs to meet their definition of certified.