Defying the national trend of only 1.5 percent of eligible hospitals attesting in 2014, St. Elizabeth Hospital in Enumclaw, Wash. achieved Meaningful Use Stage 2 using MEDITECH technology. St. Elizabeth accomplished Stage 2 with information technology (IT) support from Engage, a division of Inland Northwest Health Services (INHS).
“Our hospital has been a leader in the shift toward electronic health records (EHR) over the last several years,” said Danielle Uhler, registered nurse and clinical systems specialist at St. Elizabeth Hospital. “Our challenge was meeting the patient portal requirement of Stage 2. Engage worked with our emergency department to develop a solution that was easy for our care teams to enroll patients into the portal and help illustrate its importance.”
St. Elizabeth is one of only 78 hospitals that have achieved the Stage 2 milestone out of approximately 5,000 participating hospitals nationally, according to recent information released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
“St. Elizabeth was well positioned to meet Meaningful Use Stage 2 criteria based on their history and commitment of embracing EHR technology into their care teams’ workflow,” said Marcia Cheadle, senior director of meaningful use and advanced clinicals at Engage. “We were able to support them in achieving Stage 2 by providing the staff an innovative patient portal enrollment process that helped them engage with patients, making the process easier and more user-friendly.”
Meaningful Use Stage 2 objectives encourage patient interactions and engagement through requirements like a patient portal and the successful, secure transmission of data. Engage partners with hospitals to become an extended IT support team, working directly with hospital customers to determine what methods best fit the hospital’s environment in line with the requirements of state and federal governments.
“By working closely with customers, our team of clinicians and IT analysts adapt our attestation best practices to ensure their success,” Cheadle said.
