Meaningful use - a CMIO perspective

The following is an excerpt from a panel discussion organized by HIMSS-Minnesota in May 2011. Four CMIOs from the major health systems in Minnesota participated.
As the Chair for the panel discussion, I asked six questions to the group. The panel’s responses are given below. I have bulleted the responses for an easy read.


1) How have the Meaningful Use rules impacted your organization?

• Effort intensive/energy intensive
• Need work flow changes/strong change management focus
• Ongoing education at provider and support staff
• Can leverage the foundation for newer initiatives


2) What is your organization's strategy to meet Meaningful Use requirements?

• Governance Structure with Executive involvement and oversight
• Committees to divide and conquer
• Intense Provider engagement
• Buy in required at various/ levels groups
– Physicians
– Nurses
– Support staff
• Strong Program Management
• Use of various tracking tools

3) What are the challenges you faced /are facing in adoption on Meaningful use requirements?

• Subjectivity in interpretation of MU requirements
• For organizations with large enterprise wide EMRs, the flexibility to redesign work flows is limited as a standard workflow is prescribed by the EMR vendor
• technology challenges/vendor readiness
• Workflow redesign challenges
• Quality reporting requirements vs providers perceived best practices in quality reporting
• Productivity challenges for providers

4) Have the Meaningful Use requirements impacted other strategic initiatives such as ACO and ICD-10 conversion plans? If so how?

• Can leverage some of the learning and investments in technology and process improvements being made
• Juggling of priorities
• Demand on organization’s human and financial resources

5) What tips can you give other organizations to meet Meaningful Use requirements?

• Needs to be seen as an end-user driven project and not as an IT driven initiative
• Process improvement is critical
• Early engagement of Operational leadership, physician leadership crucial
• Training/training/Training
• Remove jargon in communication and use plain English
• Need to ensure that physician productivity is not impacted adversely

6) Thoughts/comments if any on Stage 2 requirements?

• Aggressive schedule is a challenge
• Start Planning now !!!
• Quality measures could be an area to think about ahead of time
• Manage schedules around Medicaid an Medicare deadlines