Pediatrics and EHR Incentive – Meaningful Use Monday

Written by: John Lynn

I know that there are a number of pediatric doctors that read EMR and HIPAA along with a number of Pediatric EHR vendors. They could likely speak to the challenge of meaningful use and the EHR incentive money in much more depth than I. In fact, I hope they will chime in with the pediatric perspective on meaningful use and EHR money in the comments. As most of you know, I’ve always seen EMR and HIPAA as a forum for great discussion.

To start the discussion of pediatrics and EHR incentive money, I came across a couple tweets from AMIA 2012 that paint a very sad picture for most pediatricians when it comes to getting government money to help with their EHR implementation.

S80: Lehman – must have 20% pts on Medicaid for MU eligibility, but pts on Medicaid unevenly distributed. Diff for peds to qualify #AMIA2012

— Kim Unertl (@kimunertlphd) November 7, 2012

I wish that I had all the background on this tweet. However, the message is quite clear: it will be difficult for pediatrics to qualify for the EHR incentive money.

This second tweet puts some hard numbers on the pediatricians that could qualify for meaningful use:

Amongst challenges in Peds “Only 54% Pediatricians qualified for MU” because requires 20% Medicaid – Panel on EHR AND MU #AMIA2012

— Martha Adams, MD (@mbadams) November 7, 2012

This isn’t such a surprise since meaningful use has always been so primary care focused. Meaningful Use has come a long way to try and include more medical specialties (see my post on radiology meaningful use), but it’s hard to change something into something it wasn’t ever intended to accomplish.

I look forward to hearing pediatricians’ experience with meaningful use in the comments.