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Readers Write: Are You a “Check the Box” Executive?

October 15, 2014 Readers Write 1 Comment

Are You a “Check the Box” Executive?
By Dana Sellers

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Over the Labor Day weekend, CMS released an update for Stage 2 Meaningful Use that provides some relief to providers struggling to fully implement the 2014 requirements. That’s great, but here’s the problem: Meaningful Use is not just an exercise to check some boxes off.

It’s more than implementing CPOE. It’s more than getting your physicians to use a problem list. It’s more than the incentive dollars. It’s about getting value beyond the implementation.

If your organization attested in 2012, you have been continuously collecting discrete standardized and coded data for close to two years. You’ve done the heavy lifting and you’re continuing to do so for Stage 2. Now you have a foundation that provides a common data platform across the organization with standardized vocabularies, regardless of different EHRs or other operational systems.

While you may be awash with all kinds of data, Meaningful Use provides specific clinical data that you can focus on. You have a means to ensure that all parts of the organization can begin to measure the same things the same way.

In a recent project, we turned our new cadre of Quintiles researchers and biostatisticians loose on a bunch of clinical data. We imposed one important ground rule: we limited the data to things that were already being collected for Meaningful Use. We asked if they could find anything interesting. In a matter of weeks, they discovered significant findings that relate directly to outcomes and cost.

Here’s the cool part. Every organization that has attested for Meaningful Use has the data needed to do the same kind of study.

Are you looking at Meaningful Use as a check-the-box exercise, or are you looking to drive real value? Have you considered the possibilities of using your current data foundation in order to improve workflow and processes?

For example, changing how the patient intake process occurs, not only for better collection of data, but also for safety and care coordination. Can you move beyond monitoring clinical process measures to conducting analytics that will drive insights for better care and outcomes?

It takes the organization thinking about Meaningful Use as a foundation for value. It requires change.

  • Break down organizational silos. No single department owns the challenges facing organizations around quality, cost, and performance. Yet multiple departments and stakeholders often try to answer the same types of questions, resulting in inefficient processes as well as conflicting answers. Create cross-departmental, multi-disciplinary teams to address these challenges.
  • Get data governance in place. Information transformation requires that data is consistent, accurate, and timely. This foundational data is a start, but still requires an organizational structure and process to provide direction and decision-making to create common definitions and apply common standards across multiple stakeholders and departments.
  • Start with the foundation. There is tremendous value in the foundational MU data. Begin to explore beyond the standard Meaningful Use process objectives. Use this foundation to evaluate how well standards are applied. Explore for other clinical insights like impacts of the use of evidence-based orders on specific disease-based populations in this data set.

Meaningful Use is not an IT project or task to cross off a project list. It is a foundation for an information journey to value.

Dana Sellers is CEO of Encore, A Quintiles Company of Houston, TX.



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