What a week! After months of speculating when the final Meaningful Use criteria would be released, we got word of the announcement from the ONC on Monday afternoon. The next morning, I was watching the live broadcast online at 7:00 am with a cup of coffee. Our first planning meeting kicked-off just a few minutes after the call ended. The next few days were a flurry of analysis, gigantic PDF documents and meetings here at Practice Fusion HQ.
Now that the dust has settled a bit, I thought it would be a good time to pull together some links that might have slipped through the cracks.
From Practice Fusion:
- Tuesday: Dr. Rowley posts an initial analysis of the updated Meaningful Use rules
- Tuesday: Dr. Laffel interviews with ONC leader Dr. Blumenthal shortly after the announcement – Part I and Part II
- Wednesday: Practice Fusion released a formal response applauding to the new criteria
- “In healthcare, paper kills. Paper needs to be eliminated from medicine. Washington’s pragmatic and achievable Meaningful Use standards for physicians help us get one step closer,” said Practice Fusion CEO, Ryan Howard. ”We are proud to have participated in this process and confident that our community will be able to meet the new standards. Health IT adoption will rise dramatically as a result of these guidelines combined with affordable, easy-to-use EHR systems – and that’s good news for every provider and patient.”
- Wednesday: CNET and other media outlets report on the new criteria with Practice Fusion’s insight
- Thursday: Dr. Rowley posts an update on EHR certification guidelines
- Friday: First of many team meetings at Practice Fusion counting us down to certification and Stage 1.
Other can’t-miss resources:
- The article that first explained it all – Dr. Blumenthal’s summary on NEJM
- Dell’s healthcare team provided a thorough analysis of the new regulations
- The WSJ put Meaningful Use in perspective with hospital physician rankings
- Chilmark Research analyzed what the news means for the health sector
Like Dr. Blumenthal said in our interview “This seems like an end, but it’s really not, it’s just the beginning.” Our product development team is working diligently to get any missing final criteria built into the EHR system over the next few months. The clinical team is right by their side ensuring that we design each requirement to be as innovative and helpful to our users as possible. Account managers and support specialists are being trained on the new criteria so they can expertly answer all our user’s questions. Marketing has dozens of pages of EHR incentive resources to update for our community and a second EHR incentive press release to put out next week.
It’s an exciting time. HHS certification has been company goal since the very first incentive announcements and now it’s close to a reality. We welcome all your questions about the new rules and how Practice Fusion is preparing. Along with Dr. Laffel and Dr. Rowley, I would be happy to provide answers as we all take the next step forward toward health IT.
Emily Peters
Director of Communications
Practice Fusion EMR
