Meaningful Use to the Max

Instead of striving for "meaningful use" of electronic health records, health-care providers aiming to provide accountable care should shoot for "optimal use" of EHRs, argues a Wisconsin hospital executive.

"In the future, we'll want to ensure that we're using EHRs to their fullest potential and that specific EHR capabilities that influence improvement in quality, preventive screening, service enhancements, patient adherence or cost reductions are maximally used," writes Dr. Craig E. Samitt, president and CEO of Dean Health System, this week on iHealthBeat.org.

"We'll want to identify which best practices decision-support prompts we should use to guide clinicians to standards of care that are evidence-based," he writes in a column outlining his predictions for the future of accountable care. "We'll want to optimize clinical use of EHRs, so that they are as proficient as possible and the technology is viewed as an enabler of productivity and satisfaction, not a detractor."

In other words, he writes, simply implementing and achieving meaningful use of EHRs isn't enough.

Additional predictions by Samitt:

• Health information exchange will become mainstream.
• The health-care industry has only scratched the surface in its use of technology, which he says will play an explosive role in all aspects of patient care.
• "Accurate, transparent, predictive and comparative data will be omnipresent," allowing health-care providers to compile reliable benchmarking data comparing their performance with other providers.