Is your ROI vendor ready to help you meet MU?

on October 24th, 2011   by Amy Derlink

The buzz in the healthcare arena is Meaningful Use (MU) and how Eligible Hospitals (EHs) and Eligible Providers (EPs) will meet the requirements.  As an HIM professional, you’re faced with dual challenges of demonstrating MU of the electronic health record (EHR) and using combinations of EHR modules to meet the MU core objectives. 

HIM professionals need to assess their release of information (ROI) vendors to be sure that they are ready to meet the core objectives of the first stage of MU.  The primary focus of the core objectives is patient access to electronic health information; therefore, MU factors significantly into HIM departments’ daily operations.  As you know, MU includes three Core Objectives for EHs and two Core Objectives for EPs that tie directly into ROI.   Core Objective 11 requires EHs to demonstrate that 50 percent of their patients who request an electronic copy of their health information are provided the electronic copy within three business days.  EPs are required to do the same under Core Objective 12. 

The ability to track this core objective in your ROI software and calculate results that demonstrate the 50 percent requirement has been met is crucial.  All HIM professionals who use an ROI vendor must ask themselves, and consequently their vendor, the following imperative questions regarding their ROI tracking software:

Can it track requests and generate a simplified report that provides you with the total number of patients that requested an electronic copy of their health information? 

Can it report the total number of patients who received an electronic copy of their health information within three business days upon request? 

Does it provide the final percentage that meets Core Objectives 11 and 12? 

This same thought process must occur for HIM professionals when meeting the MU requirements for providing an electronic copy of discharge instructions to the patient upon request at the time of discharge; and in the clinic environment the same holds true for clinical summaries being provided to the patient in an electronic format by the EPs within three business days. While this function may happen out on the floor as part of the clinical care process, thought must be given to how the items will be tracked and reported.  This is another area your ROI vendor may be able to assist with depending on the capabilities of the software.  Release of electronic health information and meeting the MU requirements should be the number one priority of health information technology departments for 2011.