Basics of Meaningful Use

Anyone working in the health care industry should be familiar with the term "meaningful use."  Meaningful use will have many implications for all health care professionals including nursees.  Because of the impact to nursing, it is important for nurses to have a basic understanding of what meaningful use is, the plan for adoption,  the ways it will impact nursing and health care, and the ramifications for health care organizations who do not meet meaningful use criteria.  The purpose of this and the following blogs will be to provide basic information about meaningful use.



Meaningful Use: Where Did It Come From?

 In February, 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  Contained in this bill is the Health IT for Economic Health Act (HITECH).  The main purpose of HITECH is to provide resources, tools, and incentives for the adoption of electronic health records.  One incentive comes in the form of $19.2 billion allocated to development and implementation of health IT.  The Department of Health and Human Services has a complete website devoted to the HITECH Act.  The HITECH Act includes eight seperate programs designed to work together become the foundation of how the electronic medical record (EMR) can function to benefit all Americans. 

The creation of the EMR is the basis for meaningful use and the HITECH Act.  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is tasked with overseeing and providing incentive payments to eligible providers, hospitals, and critical access hospitals.  The eligible party must demonstrate adoption, implemetation, and meaningful use of the EMR to CMS by providing specific core competencies. Meaningful use entails three main components according to ARRA: The EMR should be capable of e-presccribing, exchanging information with other systems, and submit clinical quality and other measures to agencies.  Additionally, CMS defines the dates and criteria for the three stages of implementation of the EMR for meaningful use.

The following video provides a quick, high level overview of meaningful use.

Over the next few weeks, the requirements needed to meet meaningful use in each of the three stages will be discussed.