By 2011, at least 10 percent of all orders processed in a hospital must be entered through CPOE to qualify that institution for CMS incentives under the HITECH Act, according to a proposed matrix of meaningful use released today by ONC’s HIT Policy Committee.
Other 2011 hospital requirements are:
- implementation of drug-drug, drug-allergy, and drug-formulary checks
- maintenance of up-to-date problem lists of current and active diagnoses based on ICD-9 or SNOMED
- incorporation of lab-test results into EHR as structured data
- reporting of hospital quality measures to CMS
- implementation of one clinical decision rule related to a high-priority hospital condition
- providing of patients with an e-copy of their health information
- capability to exchange key clinical information (eg. discharge summary, procedures, problem lists, medication lists, allergies, test results) among providers of care
In another major development, the committee recommended that incentives be paid according to an ‘adoption year’ timeframe rather than a calendar year timeframe. “Under this scenario, qualifying for the first-year incentive payment would be assessed using the 2011 Measures. The payment rate and phaseout of payments would follow the calendar dates in the statute, but qualifying for incentives would use the ‘adoption-year’ approach,” the committee stated.
