Specialist Physicians Qualifying for Meaningful Use Find Patient Summary Distribution is Most Difficult Issue, ChartLogic Reports
SALT LAKE CITY (June 16, 2011) – According to a survey of specialist physicians conducted by ChartLogic Inc., a leading national provider of EHR systems, the most difficult requirement to qualify for the federal government’s “meaningful use” (MU) incentives is distributing clinical summaries to patients. The telephone survey took place in May and encompassed 93 separate specialist physician medical practices.
This challenge, distributing clinical summaries to patients, was cited by 38% of the specialist physicians. The MU attestation guidelines require the medical office to provide clinical summaries, either paper or electronic, to patients within three business days after the physician’s examination.
According to Brad Melis, ChartLogic executive vice president, “If the practice has installed a Web-based patient portal as part of the EHR system, it is simple to upload the summary to the site where the patient can retrieve it. There is no requirement that the patient download the information from the portal, it just has to be available to him. If a practice does not have a patient portal, this requirement is difficult to meet because of the time and cost involved in printing and mailing the summaries.”
The survey found the second major difficulty was collecting patients’ vital signs (height, weight, blood pressure, BMI). This requirement was cited by 14% of the specialist practices as their biggest challenge.
A third specific challenge, collecting patient demographics, was reported by 8% of practices to be the single biggest problem. The MU requirements state that practices must collect demographics as structured data, including preferred language, gender, race, ethnicity and date of birth.
“The meaningful use attestation process is difficult, but achievable for most specialist physicians. Because most small practices do not have an IT professional on their staff, it becomes very important to select an EHR vendor who will offer individual training and guidance,” Melis said.
About ChartLogic
Founded in 1994, ChartLogic currently serves some 1,000 physicians in 49 states. Guaranteed to meet meaningful use requirements, ChartLogic offers two comprehensive electronic health record suites that include electronic medical records, superior medical billing software, document management and interactive patient education. For further information, visit www.chartlogic.com
Source: ChartLogic
