ChartLogic, a national provider of electronic health records, has announced it has completed a survey of orthopedic practices about meaningful use and found the top two biggest challenges in meeting the government requirements was distributing clinical summaries to patients and collecting patients' vital signs.
The survey of 38 orthopedic medical practices revealed clinical summaries as the top MU challenge, identified by 29 percent of the groups, according to a news release. MU requirements state the physician's office must provide clinical summaries to patients within three business days.
"If the practice has installed a Web-based patient portal as part of the EHR system, it is simple to upload the summary to the site where the patient can retrieve it," said Brad Melis, ChartLogic executive vice president, in the release. "There is no requirement that the patient download the information from the portal, it just has to be available to him. If a practice does not have a patient portal, this requirement is difficult to meet because of the time and cost involved in printing and mailing the summaries. "
Collecting patients' vital signs (height, weight, blood pressure, BMI) was second biggest challenge, identified by 24 percent of the groups.
"Many orthopedists and other surgical specialists are not in the habit of collecting patient vitals," said Mr. Melis, in the release. "Now they have to incorporate that task into to their workflow."
The survey found that just 10 percent of practices reported no problems attesting to the MU requirements.
April 18 was the first day to attest or file online for the incentive payments (up to $18,000 per physician for the first year). The survey found 10 of the 38 practices had completed attestation and qualified for the awards, with the other 28 indicating plans to complete the process later this year.
To complete the attestation process and qualify for the payments, physicians or practice managers must adopt a certified EHR and show they are meeting a series of standards on collecting, storing and transmitting key patient data.
Mr. Melis noted that the best strategy for any medical group is to begin adoption of a certified EHR system as soon as possible to take advantage of incentive payments, according to the release. Starting in 2013, the Medicare incentives start to phase out, with incentives completely ending in 2015, and physicians who cannot demonstrate MU will then start to face a series of escalating penalties.
"The MU attestation process is difficult, but achievable for most independent physicians," Mr. Melis said, in the release. "Because most small practices do not have an IT professional on their staff, it becomes very important to select an EHR vendor who will offer individual training and guidance."
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