Hospitals and clinicians around the country are working to implement electronic heath records (EHR) and demonstrate Meaningful Use. While the focus is on the technology involved, there are objectives designed to ensure that clinicians and patients have access to the latest medical information.
Resources such as DynaMed and Patient Education Reference Center (PERC) from EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) can be integrated into any EHR system. Integration of EBSCO resources provides premium options for hospitals and healthcare providers who need to incorporate evidence-based medical information, patient education information and discharge instructions into EHR systems in compliance with Meaningful Use objectives.
The federal government has allocated funds to encourage increased usage of EHR technology by hospitals and clinicians as a part of the provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). This provision -- the HITECH Act -- will provide incentive payments administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid to eligible professionals, eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals that adopt and successfully implement “meaningful use” of certified EHR systems. Between now and the year 2015, hospitals and eligible providers participating in Medicare and Medicaid will need to meet HITECH EHR requirements in order to receive bonus payments and avoid penalties.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid has outlined three stages of Meaningful Use, however, Stage One is the one stage that is currently defined. The criteria for Stage One Meaningful Use is based on a series of “core” objectives that must all be met and a set of 10 “menu” objectives of which hospitals and eligible providers must meet any five.
DynaMed provides the evidence-based information that is an important component of creating clinical decision support rules under Meaningful Use (Core Set Objective 10). Being able to access DynaMed’s evidence-based clinical information from within the EHR allows healthcare providers to make decisions based on the latest medical evidence, supporting a patient-centric approach to medicine and improving patient care.
EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) was in news recently when it released 24 new eBook subject sets. The subject sets are part of a rapidly growing collection of eBooks that are offered in convenient collections grouped by subject matter.
Sujata Garud is a HealthTechZone freelancer with three years of writing/editing experience and two years of market research experience. As an editor she has covered the IT, electronics, banking, pharma, construction, mining and healthcare industries. To see more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Tammy Wolf
