Mapping Hospital Readiness for Meaningful Use

CHICAGO (June 2, 2010) – With hospitals expected to meet in 2011 the first phase of deadlines for Meaningful Use specified in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, HIMSS Analytics has added new questions to its annual Survey on Meaningful Use. The questions include those developed by the Health Story Project on the inclusion of structured document standards that must be in place so that narrative data converts to a structured format and can be imported in to the EMR.

HIMSS Analytics Study: A leader in health IT market research, HIMSS Analytics tracks the EMR implementation status of more than 5,000 U.S., non-governmental hospitals through its annual Study with hospital CIOs.  The data gathered provides a detailed look at the clinical and financial application environments in U. S. hospitals. HIMSS Analytics also developed the Electronic Medical Record Adoption ModelSM - or EMRAM - to score hospitals in the HIMSS Analytics Database on their .progress in completing the eight stages to creating a paperless patient record environment.

In our evaluation of EMR Adoption Model scores over 2008–2009, we found that hospitals are continuing to advance the care delivery capabilities of their EMR environment,” said John P. Hoyt, FACHE, FHIMSS, Vice President, HIMSS Healthcare Organizational Services. “ARRA funding incentives are driving EMR implementation. With this expanded arsenal of data, HIMSS Analytics can help healthcare providers better understand and follow the Meaningful Use requirements while moving higher on the EMRAM scale.”

The Health Story Project:  Much of the information in a patient’s medical record may be entered by the physician or nurse in chart form, such as notes taken during a clinic visit, lab reports or other information that contributes to the completeness of individual health history. Health Story produces data standards for the flow of information between common types of healthcare documents and electronic medical records.

These standards are based on HL7 Clinical Document Architecture reusing templates from the Continuity of Care Document. Thus, data gathered from the Health Story questions will determine if hospitals have these templates in place and how they are used in conjunction with the electronic medical record.

“The members of Health Story believe that all of the clinical information required for good patient care, administration, reporting and research should be readily available electronically, including information from narrative documents,” said Executive Committee Representative, Liora Alschuler, Principal, Alschuler Associates, LLC. “With the data gathered from the HIMSS Analytics Study, we will know how hospitals are using document standards to enrich the flow of information to their EMRs.”

HIMSS Analytics expects to begin reporting on hospital readiness for Meaningful Use in September 2010. Learn more about HIMSS Analytics.  Find out more about Health Story.

About HIMSS Analytics


HIMSS Analytics is a wholly owned not-for-profit subsidiary of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). The company collects and analyzes healthcare data related to IT processes and environments, products, IS department composition and costs, IS department management metrics, healthcare trends and purchase-related decisions. HIMSS Analytics delivers high quality data and analytical expertise to healthcare delivery organizations, healthcare IT companies, state governments, financial companies, pharmaceutical companies, and consulting firms.  Visit www.himssanalytics.org/ for more information.

About Health Story 
The Health Story Project, founded a little over two years ago, is a non-profit collaborative of healthcare vendors, providers and associations. This project develops HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) Implementation Guides for common types of electronic healthcare documents, brings them through the HL7 ballot process and promotes their adoption within the industry. Over the previous two years, the initiative supported the development of five technical implementation guides for standard electronic documents, including the Consultation Note, History and Physical, Operative Note, Discharge Summary and Diagnostic Imaging Report. Work is currently underway within HL7 to produce standards for Progress Notes, a Procedure Note for an endoscopy report and CDA for Unstructured Documents.
 
For more information, contact:
Joyce Lofstrom/HIMSS
312-915-9237    jlofstrom@himss.org
Joy Kuhl/Optimal Accords
703-842-5311   joy@optimalaccords.com