As healthcare organizations strive to meet the requirements of meaningful use, preliminary data from Chicago-based HIMSS Analytics indicate that the 687 hospitals responding to the survey have the ability to meet both core and menu requirements for Stage 1 of meaningful use. The final rules designate a “core” group of requirements that must be met, plus an additional “menu” of procedures from which providers may choose, according to the government announcement on meaningful use.
Rather than provide a single data snapshot, HIMSS Analytics released this preliminary data, which is statistically significant at a 99 percent confidence level and a 5 percent margin of error, as the first step in its ongoing study of the progress of healthcare organizations to meet meaningful use. Each quarter, beginning January 2011, HIMSS Analytics will release updated data and analysis on meaningful use compliance for healthcare organizations.
HIMSS Analytics, recognized for its annual analysis of health IT implementations at more than 5,000 US, non-federal hospitals, added questions on meaningful use to its annual survey of US hospitals before the final rules were announced. Thus, the data reports on 12 of the 14 core and eight of the 10 menu requirements, since not all of the final requirements were initially included in the questions.
Other findings in this initial data set (detailed in Figure 1 and Figure 2) from HIMSS Analytics include:
- Nearly one quarter (22 percent) of participating hospitals have the capability to achieve 10 or more of the required core measures in the meaningful use Stage 1 requirements.
- Some 34 percent of respondents have the capability to achieve between five and nine of the core measures for meaningful use.
- Just over 40 percent (40.47 percent) of the market indicated they have the capability to meet five or more of the menu items for meaningful use.
