Lynn Scheps is Vice President, Government Affairs at EHR vendor SRSsoft. In this role, Lynn has been a Voice of Physicians and SRSsoft users in Washington during the formulation of the meaningful use criteria. Lynn is currently working to assist SRSsoft users interested in showing meaningful use and receiving the EHR incentive money. Check out Lynn’s previous Meaningful Use Monday posts.
At last week’s HIT Policy Committee meeting, Robert Tagalicod, (the new director of the Office of E-Health Standards & Services), presented an analysis of the attestation experience to-date [See John’s previous Meaningful Use Details post for the slides and report]. The results lend themselves to some interesting observations—admittedly preliminary findings, but revealing nonetheless:
- The average performance levels were quite high—on those measures that have thresholds to be met, providers attested to results considerably above the level required for successful accomplishment. This is a positive sign that once providers commit to an EHR and to meaningful use, they try to use the EHR on a routine basis, not just to satisfy the minimum requirements. True, these initial attesters represent early EHR adopters who have had time to become successful EHR users, but hopefully this trend will be sustained.
- Care coordination measures seem to present a challenge for many providers—the most commonly deferred (i.e., not selected) menu measures were medication reconciliation and summary of care at transitions.
- Very few providers were actually able to conduct a test of their ability to electronically submit syndromic surveillance information to public health agencies or submit immunization data to registries (5% and 28% of attesters, respectively). Not surprisingly, most EPs either excluded or deferred these public health measures.
Of the 2,383 EPs that attested, 137 were unsuccessful. I’d be interested to know where they stumbled and if they will succeed in another reporting period.
[…] status), would have higher thresholds to meet—not a major obstacle if the higher-than-required performance trend reported among early attesters continues—and some would have a slightly broader scope, (e.g., […]
All- We appreciate you guys obtaining and sharing this data.
Is there anyway to identify the clinical quality questions chosen (by frequency) by the various physician specialties? For example, of the 56 neurologists noted in the report, what clinical criteria did they choose? Or, did they choose exemptions / waivers? I am also interested in the same data for neurosurgeons or orthopedic surgeons…..
thanks,
Art
Art,
Did you see this post which has a little bit more granular data: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2011/08/05/preliminary-meaningful-use-details-out/ ? It doesn’t have everything you want, but it has a bit more than is posted above.
I wish CMS would release the data so that we could do some interesting analysis like what you describe. It would be really interesting if they did.
Art,
I have never seen any analysis of the particular clinical quality measures on which EPs have reported, although I do agree that it would be interesting. If that data were released, however, it would reveal more about the CQMs on which EHRs have chosen to seek certification than it would about their selection by one specialty or another. (Most EHRs are certified for 9 CQMs – the 6 core and 3 additional, not for all 44 measures.) By the way, there are no exclusions for this meaningful use measure – all EPs must report on the clinical quality measures.
Lynn