Meaningful Use Vexes CIOs

Eight of 10 hospitals' chief information officers are concerned or very concerned about their ability to meet meaningful use standards for electronic health records on the timetable set by the federal government.

The pessimism of CIOs is among the findings of a new survey released this week by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. The professional services firm's Health Research Institute surveyed 120 chief information officers and health IT executives who are members of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives.

Meaningful use standards must be met to trigger release of incentive funds provided by the government to spur adoption of electronic records. Tens of billions of dollars are at stake, but about half of the CIOs surveyed indicated that their hospital would not be ready to apply by 2011, when the incentive funds will become available. The government will raise the bar for meeting the standards in 2013 and again in 2015.

According to the report, Ready or Not: On the road to the meaningful use of EHRs and health IT:

A typical 500-bed hospital demonstrating meaningful use by 2011 could receive more than $6 million in Medicare incentive payments, and individual physicians could receive up to $44,000.

By 2017, once [noncompliance] penalties have been fully phased in, the typical 500-bed hospital could lose as much as $3.2 million annually in Medicare funding if it does not comply.

Among the barriers to adoption cited by the report are a lack of clarity about meaningful use standards, a shortage of skilled IT professionals, vendors that are not ready to support meaningful use and questions about a national healthcare broadband infrastructure to support exchange of data in electronic medical records.

"Health care organizations are building high-performance race cars to travel back-country roads," said Daniel Garrett, leader of the health information technology practice at PwC, according to an story published by Computerworld.

In addition, the inability to meet meaningful use standards could undermine the viability of weaker healthcare organizations, "leading to consolidation in the healthcare arena," predicted Daniel Morreale, vice president of regional health information organization development at AtlantiCare, in New Jersey.