CMS Shares Benefits Of Meaningful Use

CMS has released new data which lays out some of the benefits of Meaningful Use since the inception of the program in 2011.  The data outlines various ways in which Meaningful Use requirements have played out statistically.

According to the statement, the following landmarks have been reached over the last few years:

• More than 190 million electronic prescriptions have been sent by doctors, physician’s assistants and other health care providers using EMRs.

• Health care professionals sent 4.6 million patients an electronic copy of their health information from their EMRs.

• More than 13 million reminders about appointments, required tests, or check-ups were sent to patients using EMRs.

• Providers have checked drug and medication interactions to ensure patient safety more than 40 million times through the use of EMRs.

• Providers shared more than 4.3 million care summaries with other providers when patients moved between care settings.

It’s clear from these stats that e-prescribing is on a serious roll — though it’s interesting to me that over the last few years I’ve only had my scripts e-prescribed a couple of times.  Clearly there’s a lot more work to do there despite the large number.

On the other hand, these factoids aren’t staggering given that they’re cumulative over a few years. For example, while it’s encouraging that providers have shared more than 4 million care summaries (Continuity of Care Documents, I assume), that’s still a tiny fraction of the volume that we’ll need to see to say we have anything like real interoperability.

I was actually surprised to see that the reminders issued about appointments, tests and check-ups stood at a relatively modest 13 million. Primary care practices, in particular, are under such pressure to make sure patients hit their marks that you’d think setting up such reminders would be a no-brainer. But apparently it’s not.

All told, the numbers cited by CMS definitely suggest progress, but not as big of a win as the agency might have preferred. Let’s see the numbers for patient data sharing up in the hundreds of millions and then I’ll really be impressed.