Hospitals

You need to understand how ready your hospital is to meet the meaningful use deadline—thousands of dollars of federal incentive payments are riding on it. The process of selecting, implementing, and achieving meaningful use of an electronic health record (EHR) system takes a year—when done efficiently.

To meeting the standards of meaningful use and to fully use technology to support patient safety and care quality, small hospitals are likely to need assistance with Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) and electronic medication administration record (eMAR). Your hospital may also need assistance with clinical data repository and clinical decision support capability.

REACH can help your hospital successfully implement these technologies.

Where are you on the path to demonstrating meaningful use—the federal and state requirements for EHR functionality, reporting, and connectivity?

Unsure. If you have an EHR and are unsure where you stand with meaningful use, REACH can conduct an assessment of your hospital to determine how ready it is to meet meaningful use criteria.

Great system needs optimization. Your hospital might have a great system in place and you only need to turn on or tweak certain functionality to fully benefit you and meet federal meaningful use requirements. With our understanding of EHR systems and clinical practices, REACH can take your practice to meaningful use.

Dissatisfied with current EHR. Your EHR might not be meeting your expectations for any number of reasons. You may have a dead end product that is no longer being upgraded. Your EHR might have been implemented without fully evaluating workflows prior to implementation. Whatever the reason, you need an EHR that works for your hospital. REACH can help identify what is limiting your ability to get your money’s worth out of your system. We can help you determine if you want to build an EHR in parallel with your current practice management system or start with a new integrated system.

No EHR. EHRs help improve patient safety and quality of care. They help contain a hospital’s costs and an optimized system—one that’s set up and tuned to maximize your practice clinically, operationally, and technically—will make you eligible to receive Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments.

Benefits of an EHR >

Preparing for health information exchange

If your hospital has a well-honed EHR, you’ll want providers who admit patients to your hospital to be prepared to exchange health information with you. Both sending and receiving parties must be prepared to exchange health information electronically. REACH can work with hospitals and clinics in your system or independent providers who are affiliated with your hospital.

Notes:

Fewer than 14% of Critical Access Hospitals had an EHR with a clinical data repository and clinical decision support capability. Fewer than 3% had an EHR with Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) and electronic medication administration record (eMAR), according to a Flex Monitoring Team study in 2006.

http://www.flexmonitoring.org/documents/PolicyBrief14-HIT-Meaningful-Use-CAHs.pdf [PDF - 237 KB]