HIMSS Analytics recently sent out some interesting results from a survey the did of hospital’s preparation for meaningful use. Here’s the results:

*Nearly one quarter (22 percent) of participating hospitals have the capability to achieve 10 or more of the required core measures in the meaningful use Stage 1 requirements.

*Some 34 percent of respondents have the capability to achieve between five and nine of the core measures for meaningful use.

*Just over 40 percent (40.47 percent) of the market indicated they have the capability to meet five or more of the menu items for meaningful use.

As lone data points it’s hard to judge if hospitals are making progress or not. I’ve heard many people say that hospitals are going full bore towards meaningful use and that ambulatory practices are slower to adopt EMR and meaningful use. I’m not sure this is totally true. Plus, the lead time needed to implement in an ambulatory setting is so much shorter than in a hospital. Even a hospital that owns ambulatory practices.

I’m told that HIMSS Analytics will be doing this same survey every couple months. I’ll see about publishing the results as I get them so we can compare the change.

There are a TON of meaningful use resources for those physicians and clinics interested in showing meaningful use of an EMR in order to get the EMR stimulus money. Here’s one such resource that I thought gave a nice summary of what’s required. Here’s a small sample of the content they offer about meaningful use:

Core Set Measures

• Use CPOE (Computerized Physician Order Entry) to order medications for more than 30% of all unique patients with at least one medication in their medication list.
• Enable drug-drug and drug-allergy interaction check functionality on the EHR for the entire reporting period.*
• Maintain an up-to-date problem list of current diagnoses for 80% of all patients. If there are no problems, indicate no problems are known.
• Maintain an up-to-date list of active medications for 80% of all patients.
• Maintain an up-to-date problem list of medication allergies for 80% of all patients.
• Generate and transmit prescriptions electronically for 40% of prescriptions written by the provider.
• Record demographics for at least 50% of patients.*
• Record and chart changes in vital signs for at least 50% of patients.*
• Record smoking status for 50% of patients 13 and older.*
• Report ambulatory clinical quality measures to CMS.*
• Implement one clinical decision support rule relevant to the provider’s specialty.
• Provide at least 50% of patients with an electronic copy of their health information, upon request, within 3 business days.*
• Provide at least 50% of patients with clinical summaries of their office visit within 3 business days.*
• Perform at least one test of the certified EHR technology’s capacity to electronically exchange key clinical information.*
• For the EHR and its related IT network, conduct a security risk analysis and implement security updates as necessary; correct security deficiencies.*

Menu Set Measures

• Enable drug-formulary checking functionality and have access to a formulary for the EHR reporting period.*
• Incorporate clinical lab-test results into the EHR as structured data for at least 40% of all lab test results.*
• Generate at least one report listing patients with a specific condition.*
• Send reminders to 20% of all patients, 65 years or older, per patient preference for follow-up care.*
• Provide at least 10% of all unique patients timely access to health information within 4 business days of the information being available to the provider.*
• Provide patient-specific education resources to at least 10% of all unique patients.*
• Perform medication reconciliation at least 50% of the time for patients transitioned from another setting of care.
• Provide a summary care record for at least 50% of patients for patients being transitioned to another setting of care.
• Perform at least one test of the certified EHR’s capability to submit electronic data to immunization registries.*
• Perform at least one test of the certified EHR’s capability to submit syndromic surveillance data to public health agencies.*

*These functions may be performed by nursing, administrative or IT staff

It is expected that EHR vendors will provide the capability to generate much of the above mentioned information within their software and they will also assist physicians in conducting data exchange testing.