Will you really qualify for meaningful use?

Are you part of the 80% of ambulatory providers who have purchased an electronic health record (EHR) and are confident they will qualify for meaningful use (MU) this year? Take a closer look to be sure.

That’s what research firm KLAS did, and it found that, when looking at what functionalities members of this group have implemented, most of them still have significant holes to fill, according to a report by the firm. Although 80% of the surveyed providers said they would quality for MU this year, more than two-thirds of them are not sharing medical records electronically with patients, and nearly half of them have not implemented clinical decision support rules; these are two key MU requirements.

The report, “Ambulatory EMR: A KLAS Guide to Meaningful Use Success,” presents the results of interviews with 597 ambulatory providers using 25 different EHR systems. The study measured vendor performance in eight key MU areas: progress notes; drug-drug and drug-allergy alerts; computerized physician order entry; data mining tools; eprescribing; clinical decision support rules; patient electronic access to medical records; and viewing active medication, allergy, and problem lists. The report also outlines several best practices for ambulatory providers looking to make an EHR purchase in the near future.