HIT Vendors Call for Clarity, Consistency on Meaningful Use

[#1]

From HealthcareITNews, "As the government works to draft a "meaningful use" definition by the end of December, healthcare IT vendors are urging clarity and consistency on what they and providers are expected to implement to receive incentives under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)."

Full Article Here

[#2]

I feel that a majority of the "Meaningful Use" criteria are fairly clear and well defined. I am, however, concerned that among these criteria are requirements for the testing of "Electronic Exchange" of "data" without an definition of the data elements, message formats, etc. Leaving the details out of these requirements only increases the cost of performing these tests as it will be up to individual organizations to interpret the requirements and develop unique testing scenarios. I would have much preferred a list of data elements to be shared and formats for messaging, and to make these massage formats a requirement of a "Certified" EHR so the vendors have to provide this functionality in their base systems. Develop the functionality once and use it many times, this would reduce the overall cost of implementation.