The Nitty-Gritty of Meaningful Use – Part 1

To this point I have contemplating Meaningful Use from 10,000 feet above the landscape.  I have done my reading, been to meetings, and met with our EMR vendor…all the usual things.  But this week it was time to roll up our sleeves and go down from 10,000 feet to cut through the jungle at ground level and bring MU to our practice of 19 physicians.

We faced the maddening task of reviewing 15 Core Set Measures and choosing 5 out of 10 Menu Set Measures, and then getting them done.  I have to admit that some parts of meaningful use are not too bad.  But there are other parts that are confusing, redundant or totally ridiculous.

Regarding the first 6 of the 15 Core Measures:

CPOE for Medication orders.   The concept is fine but the requirement is not structured well.  It reads, “More the 30% of all unique patients with at least one medication in their medication list seen by the EP (eligible provider) have at least one medication entered using CPOE.”  Read it carefully.  It says if a patient walks in my door and reports to be on any medication, I have to prescribe another medication whether the patient needs one or not.  Most doctors write enough prescriptions that by luck of the draw this won’t be a problem.  But we have 2 docs that don’t write a lot of prescriptions and they are currently don’t meet this measure even though they rarely, if ever, write a paper prescription.

Drug-Drug interactions and Drug-Allergy Interactions.  No problems here.

Maintaining a Structured Problem List.  Certified EMRs do this automatically and this function is essential to quality measurement and outcomes research.  Some of us (me included) need to change our documentation habits to get the proper data capture.   By personal habit I prefer writing unstructured paragraphs instead of distilling a patient visit down to a bunch of ICD-9 codes.  I’ll get over it.

 E-Prescribing.  Obviously an appropriate requirement.  But it sets the bar higher than the CPOE for Meds requirement (see #1 above), so why bother having the CPOE requirement at all?

 Maintain structured active medication and allergy lists.  Also a reasonable requirement.  This has always been a part of the physician’s visit routine.  The only problem is that the EMR requires the doc to check a box for each of these requirements.  I am going to try to modify our existing templates to make that task as painless as possible.

 

In future installments on this topic I will cover how we are handing the remainder of the MU requirements.  Stay tuned.

 

 

About the author

Dr. Michael Koriwchak

Dr. Michael J. Koriwchak received his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine in 1988. He completed both his Internship in General Surgery and Residency in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Koriwchak continued at Vanderbilt for a fellowship in Laryngology and Care of the Professional Voice. He is board certified by the American Board of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.
After training Dr. Koriwchak moved to Atlanta in 1995 to become one of the original physicians in Ear, Nose and Throat of Georgia. He has built a thriving practice in Laryngology, Care of the Professional Voice, Thyroid/Parathyroid Surgery, Endoscopic Sinus Surgery and General Otolaryngology. A singer himself, many of his patients are people who depend on their voice for their careers, including some well-known entertainers. Dr. Koriwchak has also performed thousands of thyroid, parathyroid and head and neck cancer operations.
Dr. Koriwchak has been working with information technology since 1977. While an undergraduate at Bucknell University he taught a computer-programming course. In medical school he wrote his own software for his laboratory research. In the 1990’s he adapted generic forms software to create one the first electronic prescription applications. Soon afterward he wrote his own chart note templates using visual BASIC script. In 2003 he became the physician champion for ENT of Georgia’s EMR implementation project. This included not only design and implementation strategy but also writing code. In 2008 the EMR implementation earned the e-Technology award from the Medical Association of Georgia.
With 7 years EMR experience, 18 years in private medical practice and over 35 years of IT experience, Dr. Koriwchak seeks opportunities to merge the information technology and medical communities, bringing information technology to health care.

2 Comments

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