Meeting federally mandated health information technology (IT) benchmarks will be a top priority for hospital IT departments over the next two years, a survey showed.
That means meeting “meaningful use” standards and transitioning to the new ICD-10 medical coding system, according to a survey of 302 hospital IT executives presented here at the Healthcare Information and Managment Systems Society (HIMSS) conference.
One-third of respondents to the survey said achieving meaningful use was the single most important IT priority to be addressed at their hospital.
“Meaningful use” refers to provisions in the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which was part of the 2009 economic stimulus package. The HITECH Act authorized incentive payments through Medicare and Medicaid to clinicians and hospitals that use EHRs in a “meaningful” way that significantly improves clinical care.
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The program offers incentive payments of up to $44,000 per clinician over five years through Medicare and $63,750 per clinician over five years through Medicaid.
More than one-quarter of respondents said they had already proven to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that they have met the government’s standard for the first stage of meaningful use of health IT, the survey found.
Criteria for the first stage of meaningful use standards were issued in 2010, and many at the HIMSS conference are eagerly awaiting the Stage II standards, which are expected to be released at the conference on Wednesday.
The survey broke down priorities by category and found that the single most important patient care-related IT issue was ensuring the organization had a fully operational electronic health record.
The single most important financial issue was ICD-10, with two-thirds of respondents saying that implementing the new coding system was the top area of focus for financial IT systems at their organization.