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12:00 AM - Epic UGM 2025
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The 2025 DirectTrust Annual Conference
2025-08-04 - 2025-08-07    
12:00 am
Three of the most interesting healthcare topics are going to be featured at the DirectTrust Annual conference this year: Interoperability, Identity, and Cybersecurity. These are [...]
ALS Nexus Event Recap and Overview
2025-08-11 - 2025-08-14    
12:00 am
International Conference on Wearable Medical Devices and Sensors
2025-08-12    
12:00 am
Conference Details: International Conference on Wearable Medical Devices and Sensors , on 12th Aug 2025 at New York, New York, USA . The key intention [...]
Epic UGM 2025
2025-08-18 - 2025-08-21    
12:00 am
The largest gathering of Epic Users at the Epic user conference in Verona. Generally highlighted by Epic’s keynote where she often makes big announcements about [...]
Events on 2025-08-04
Events on 2025-08-11
Events on 2025-08-18
Epic UGM 2025
18 Aug 25
Verona

Events

Articles

Nov 08: What Happens If a Hospital Fails to Meet Patient Engagement Requirement for Stage 2?

memorial healthcare implements hyland

Some times it is almost too easy to see what lies ahead. They say hindsight is 20/20 but from time to time peering into the future can also be a breeze. A specific patient engagement requirement challenge coming for Stage 2 Eligible Hospitals (EHs) and Critical Assess Hospitals (CAHs) hides in plain sight in the Core meaningful use (MU) measures. Difficult to achieve, as it is dependent on new technology and workflows, it might be even more difficult to document during an audit.

This Stage 2 requirement seems so simple, and is shorter than a Tweet: “Provide patients the ability to view online, download, and transmit information about a hospital admission.” However, don’t forget this MU measure is Core and very difficult to exclude unless the hospital is way out in the boonies far from the reach of widespread broadband internet access. Fail to meet this MU requirement for Stage 2 and that EHR incentive goes totally away for the year. I would not want to be the bearer of that news to the hospital board or administration. Even if there is a successful attestation on this measure it could be problematic during an audit. Hospitals tend to use technology from various vendors. If you choose a “best of breed” patient portal how hard will it be to track those patient trips to the portal to view their discharge information?

Enough talk. Let’s see what this “patient engagement” portends. There are two parts for our consideration. One is what the hospital must do, the other task is for the patient.

Hospital action required: “More than 50 percent of all unique patients discharged from the inpatient or emergency departments of the eligible hospital or CAH (POS 21 or 23) during the EHR reporting period have their information available online within 36 hours of discharge.” There is no way around this and no short cuts. You have to have a portal and you have to make discharge information available within a limited amount of time.

Patient action required: “More than 5 percent of all unique patients (or their authorized representatives) who are discharged from the inpatient or emergency department (POS 21 or 23) of an eligible hospital or CAH view, download or transmit to a third party their information during the EHR reporting period.”

So we don’t need to dust off our crystal ball to see a curve ball is coming our way. I can already hear the hue and cry that will emerge in 2014 over this issue. As the wizard said in Lochiel’s Warning: “coming events cast their shadows”.  source