Lynn Scheps is Vice President, Government Affairs at EHR vendor SRSsoft. In this role, Lynn has been a Voice of Physicians and SRSsoft users in Washington during the formulation of the meaningful use criteria. Lynn is currently working to assist SRSsoft users interested in showing meaningful use and receiving the EHR incentive money. Check out Lynn’s previous Meaningful Use Monday posts.

At last week’s HIT Policy Committee meeting, Robert Tagalicod, (the new director of the Office of E-Health Standards & Services), presented an analysis of the attestation experience to-date [See John's previous Meaningful Use Details post for the slides and report]. The results lend themselves to some interesting observations—admittedly preliminary findings, but revealing nonetheless: 

• The average performance levels were quite high—on those measures that have thresholds to be met, providers attested to results considerably above the level required for successful accomplishment. This is a positive sign that once providers commit to an EHR and to meaningful use, they try to use the EHR on a routine basis, not just to satisfy the minimum requirements. True, these initial attesters represent early EHR adopters who have had time to become successful EHR users, but hopefully this trend will be sustained.
• Care coordination measures seem to present a challenge for many providers—the most commonly deferred (i.e., not selected) menu measures were medication reconciliation and summary of care at transitions.
• Very few providers were actually able to conduct a test of their ability to electronically submit syndromic surveillance information to public health agencies or submit immunization data to registries (5% and 28% of attesters, respectively). Not surprisingly, most EPs either excluded or deferred these public health measures. 

Of the 2,383 EPs that attested, 137 were unsuccessful. I’d be interested to know where they stumbled and if they will succeed in another reporting period.

UPDATE: Check out this post I did updating the Big Winners from the HITECH EHR Stimulus Incentive Program.

Whenever government decides to spend $20 billion, there are bound to be a lot of winners. The money has to go somewhere. I previously posted how I think that EHR adoption won’t significantly increase because of HITECH. However, there will be some BIG winners from this legislation. Lets’s take a quick look at a few of them.

• EHR Vendors – I don’t think there’s any doubt that vendors will benefit from $18 billion of investment in EHR.  The legislation was signed yesterday, and I’ve already seen ads for Allscripts talking about learning about the EHR stimulus.  Marketers for every “certified” EHR are going to beat this stimulus like a dead horse.
• Health Care IT Consultants (ohhh…maybe I should become one) – Business should be just fine for EHR and health care IT consultants despite the current economic crisis.  I didn’t think there were enough before.  Even a small increase in EHR adoption will mean higher demand for health care IT consultants.
• Existing EHR Users – Despite my feeling that this stimulus won’t stimulate EHR adoption, I do think that already implemented EHR users should benefit from this EHR stimulus.  I didn’t read any “first time home buyer” provision in this legislation.  This could mean a bit of free (minus a little paperwork) cash for those who find themselves already using a certified EHR.
• CCHIT (if they get chosen) – This is a big IF, but I believe that CCHIT’s survival hinges on them being chosen as the certification required to receive stimulus.  It would say a lot if they weren’t chosen.  Let’s hope HHS has the guts to not choose them despite the incredible lobbying efforts I’m sure they’ll receive.
• Hospital Systems – I’m familiar with one hospital system that has over 100 multi specialty clinics with many of them using a centralized EHR.  Seems like a great investment to pay someone to make sure they meet the required standards.  100 clinics X number of doctors in a clinic X $40k = a lot of money
• Health and Human Services (HHS) – Even just the $2 billion in discretionary funding is a huge boost to that organization.
• Obama’s HIT Donors

Anyone else I should add to the list?