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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released their proposed meaningful use objectives that could shape the future of hospitals across the nation. The government is offering hospitals and healthcare providers tax credit incentives, stated in the Recovery Act, for those who prove meaningful use. These tax credits are designed to promote widespread adoption of electronic medical records, which could vastly improve health care quality, efficiency, and patient safety. The most effective systems will become standard across the country in order to achieve the following proposed objectives:

2011 Objectives: Through meaningful use, the goal by 2011 is to electronically capture medical information and use it to track key clinical conditions via:

' Implement drug-to-drug, drug-to-allergy, drug-to-formulary checks
' Maintain an up-to-date problem list of current and active diagnoses
' Maintain active medication list and allergies list
' Record demographics and vital signs
' Incorporate lab test results into Electronic Healthcare Records as structured data
' Generate lists of patients by specific conditions to use for quality improvement, reduction of disparities, and outreach
' Report hospital quality measures to CMS
' Implement one clinical decision rule related to a high priority hospital condition
' Check insurance eligibility electronically from public and private payers
' Provide patients with an electronic copy of their health information, including lab results, medication lists, problem list, allergies and discharge summary
' Provide patients with an electronic copy of their discharge instructions and procedures at time of discharge, upon request
' Provide access to patient-specific education resources
' Capability to exchange key clinical information (e.g. ' discharge summary, procedures, problem list, medication list, allergies, test results) among providers of care and patient authorized entities electronically
' Capability to submit electronic data to immunization registries and actual submission where required and accepted.
' Capability to provide electronic submission of reportable lab results to public health agencies and actual
' Compliance with HIPAA Privacy and Security Rule
' Compliance with new data sharing practices

2013 Objectives:

' Manage chronic conditions using patient lists and decision support
' Provide clinical decision support at the point of care (e.g., reminders, alerts)
' Specialists report to relevant external disease (e.g., cardiology, thoracic surgery, cancer) or device registries
' Conduct closed loop medication management, including
' Access for all patients to PHR populated in real time with patient health data
' Provide access to patient-specific educational resources in common primary languages
' Record patient preferences (e.g., preferred communication media, advance directive, health care proxies, treatment options)
' Documentation of family medical history
' Retrieve and act on electronic prescription fill data
' Produce and share an electronic summary care record for every transition in care (place of service, consults, discharge)

2015 Objectives: Through meaningful use, the overall goal by 2015 is to improve the national healthcare performance and support care processes.

' Achieve minimal levels of performance on quality, safety, and efficiency measures
' Implement clinical decision support for national high priority conditions
' Medical device inter- operability
' Multimedia support (e.g., x-rays)
' Patients have access to self- management tools
' Electronic reporting on experience of care
' Access comprehensive patient data from all available sources
' Use of epidemiologic data
' Automated real-time surveillance (adverse events, near misses, disease outbreaks, bioterrorism)
' Clinical dashboards
' Provide patients, on request, with an accounting of treatment, payment, and health care operations
' Protect sensitive health information to minimize reluctance of patient to seek care because of privacy concerns

If you need more information about meaningful use, or how electronic medical records will improve your healthcare practice, contact e-MDs, a leader in electronic medical record software provision at http://www.e-mds.com. e-MDs offers a host of affordable solutions for physicians and facilities looking to modernize or enhance their services with the latest EHR/EMR technology. e-MDs is committed to providing affordable and integrated EHR and Practice Management Software solutions, including clinical, financial and document management modules designed to automate medical practice processes and chart management ' delivering the clinical tools needed to succeed in today's health care environment.