Stage 1 Meaningful Use Attestation and Barriers

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Posted By: Roberta Mullin July 11, 2012

July HIT Policy Committee Presentation on Stage 1 Data from the RECs

At the July 10th HIT Policy Committee meeting, Rob Anthony from CMS and Dawn Heisey-Grove from the ONC gave a presentation, Data on Stage 1 Meaningful Use Attestation and Barriers. In November, 2011, Regional Extension Centers (RECs) were asked to enter site-level barriers (challenges) in a database. Primary categories of barriers include practice issues, vendor issues, attestation process issues, and Meaningful Use measures. Each primary category has various secondary and tertiary sub-categories.

Data collected, as of June 4, 2012, has been pulled from the ONC database. A total of 15,946 issues have been reported by RECs, impacting 45,863 providers. A total of 2,968 issues were created between May 1 and June 4, 2012, affecting 9,150 providers. 1,226 providers had issues resolved between May 1 and June 4, 2012. The top ten overall challenges categorized by number of providers impacted was reported and analyized by last month’s ranking. The top three issues were:

  • MU Measures where 10% of the new reports were this issue and 11% of the providers impacted had issues resolved
  • Provider engagement where 13% of the new reports were this issue and 10% of the providers impacted had issues resolved
  • Vendor selection where 5% of the new reports were this issue and 21% of the providers impacted had issues resolved

The following table details all of the top ten challenges as reported in the presentation.

The presentation continues to report and anyalize the top ten new issues, top ten resolved issues, overall top ten Meaningful Use measures-specific issues, top ten newly reported MU measure-specific issues (May-June 2012), top ten categories for providers trying to reach MU, proportion of providers impacted by issue type, practice issues, vendor issues, attestation process issues, top five issues by practice type, and top five MU measure-specific issues by practice type.

The HIT Policy Committee meets once a month and is charged with making recommendations to the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (HIT) on a policy framework for the development and adoption of a nationwide health information infrastructure, including standards for the exchange of patient medical information. All meetings are open to the public and you can participate by webcast.