Everyone in the healthcare IT world is sitting and waiting to know the fate of the words “certified EHR” and “meaningful use.” Yes, only a few billion dollars of EHR stimulus money are riding on those 2 terms.
Well, after the Health IT Policy Committee came out with their initial set of recommendations, it was reported that David Blumenthal, National Coordinator for Health IT, said “lively discussion (on the criteria) and considerable input on meaningful use, we decided to send the work group back to work on another set.”
Looks like the new date for more guidance from the Health IT policy committee will be their July 16th meeting.
[…] The problem is that the 22 meaningful use 2011 objectives as a collective whole would be daunting for any practice. I previously wrote about the challenge hospitals face implementing an EHR quickly, but I think this list of objectives would be hard for a practice of any size. I guess some of the reporting could be centralized for a hospital system and save them some time. For a small office, they’d have to do all the reporting themselves and that could be time consuming. No wonder David Blumenthal, ONC head, sent the meaningful use matrix back to the HIT Policy Committee. […]