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Thu, Oct 29 2009 5:39 PM EST
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The process of measuring and reporting that a hospital meets the meaningful use criteria—once those criteria are adopted—will evolve over time, said David Blumenthal, M.D., National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, during his morning keynote. “We’re going to be experimenting with the way that will happen,” he said.
That answer did not satisfy at least one CIO, who asked for an elaboration from John Glaser during an afternoon HITECH Town Hall event entitled “Meaningful Use and Beyond.” Glaser is vice president and CIO at Partners Health Care System and a senior advisor to the Office of the National Coordinator.
Glaser said that the simplest form of reporting will be for hospitals to certify to CMS that they meet the criteria. Remember, CMS will monitor compliance since it involves Medicare and Medicaid dollars. “To the degree that you make it up, you wander into fraud,” he said, adding that CIOs may want to give that approach second thoughts, noting the potential for the creation of a RAC-audit style process to check up on that assertion.
Both Blumenthal and Glaser say that measuring and reporting meaningful use will likely change over time. “There’ll be an evolution in sophistication,” Glaser said, adding that verifying meaningful use will “evolve into something more electronic and less burdensome.”
Alden Solovy, associate publisher of H&HN, is blogging live from CHIME 2009.
