While achieving meaningful use requires the use of certified EHR technology (CEHRT), building familiarity among eligible providers with the rigors of documentation and reporting does not have to wait until an EHR adoption works is adopted.
Quality Insights of Delaware Regional Extension Center (QIDE REC) Director Beth Schindele believes that this approach to meaningful use played a significant part in the organization becoming the first REC to achieve 100 perrcent of their meaningful use milestone.
Although the Delaware REC has obviously been successful in preparing providers for Stage 1 Meaningful Use specifically and EHR adoption more generally, it hasn’t been without its challenges.
“The landscape in Delaware and the readiness for health information technology actually began back in 2005,” Schindele told EHRIntelligence.com during the final day of National Health IT Week. “However, still the learning curve was great for Stage 1 Meaningful Use. There was a large percentage of providers and practices that not yet adopted a certified EHR, some that had adopted an EHR that was not going to be certified by the ATCB-, ONC- accredited EHR. So there was a lot of rip and replace work. There were a lot of updates and upgrades that still had to be accomplished.”
According to Schindele, the first challenge involved building trust among providers in the community by proving that the organization had a plan that would put them on a path to EHR incentives and quality improvements. “It was critically important for us during the recruitment days of our work to gain the trust of all of the providers and show them that we had well-vetted tools and established a business plan approach to getting them to Stage 1 Meaningful Use as early as they began,” she says.
As the QIDE REC model for helping priority-setting primary care providers in the state achieve Stage 1 Meaningful Use continues to prove, that plan includes recognizing and appreciating that the arc of the EHR adoption story begins with the paper chart.
“Every chart pulled became an opportunity to prepare for meaningful use,” explains Schindele. “The moment we began working with practices and providers the first task was to be begin cleaning up the paper charts and preparing the data in a way that would be easily entered and uploaded or saved into their EHR product once it was purchased.”
For providers working with the QIDE REC, meaningful use began well before a CEHRT was even selected, let alone implemented.
“We started preparing them even in the paper-based environment,” she continues. “We focused on meaningful use prior to selection of an EHR, so even during EHR vendor selection we had already determined which clinical quality measures and menu objectives the practice needed to focus on based on the patient population.”
Still, some have tried to minimize the accomplishment because it occurred in a small state such as Delaware, but Schindele is confident that that’s not the case at all.
“We only have three counties, so some would say our success is due to the size of the region,” she continues. “However, I would disagree because I believe what we have shown is that our business and support model and phased approach to meaningful use are scalable.”
As further proof of the soundness of REC’s model and work (if any is necessary), Schindele and her organization have their sights set on moving forward and comfortably beyond their recent milestone.
“We’re not stopping at 100 percent. We’re already up to 102 percent and have projections to reach 110 percent before the end of the year. So we’ll keep moving forward,” she adds. Source
