EHRs and Meaningful Use

By Sanin Rahman

Greetings, and welcome to the Meaningful Use section on the Arcadia Solutions Blog. My name is Sanin Rahman, and I am a member of the Healthcare Solutions team, where we focus on holistic solutions for the healthcare industry. I’ll be your official contributor on all things Meaningful Use right here on this blog.

In the world of consultants, there’s an old adage that goes something like this: “Tell what you’re going to tell them, tell them what you said you would tell them, and then tell them what you just told them.”I will try to do just that with this post, or I will at least attempt to set some expectations as to what you can get out of participating in, and not just reading, this blog.

I believe that this particular forum aims to do a few things:

• Keep you, the reader, engaged and informed about the happenings in the healthcare industry as they relate to Meaningful Use and Health IT
• Articulate an insightful position on (aspects of) Meaningful Use
• Solicit your thoughts on this particular area of healthcare reform and how it is impacting the various stakeholders within the industry

Of these three objectives, I believe the third will make this blog the most successful. The dialogue and discussion resulting from your participation is what will help all of us identify and hopefully resolve challenges that arise from the ambiguity, operational and clinical complexity, and financial constraints surrounding Meaningful Use.

Having said that, you might be wondering where Arcadia and I stand on Meaningful Use.We firmly believe that the achievement of Meaningful Use can enable providers to establish a solid foundation of Health IT adoption and data capture in the short-term. Considering the incentive dollars attached, this may also be a significant opportunity for providers who are looking to transform their practices in an industry that is about to undergo some very significant changes.

So, why do we care about data capture?For one, providers can use clinical data to better understand their patients’ health, design proactive care plans for their patient panel, and easily exchange health information at varying levels of aggregation with other providers within the community.In the long-term, the foundation of data capture and analysis will enable providers to compete more effectively in a market that is being increasingly driven by data-driven performance management.Will all of this be easy?No, not at all. In fact, making some of these changes at a systemic level may be one of the greatest challenges that this particular industry has faced. But, that’s where you come into the picture.Your interaction in this forum will hopefully enable us to share challenges, solutions, best practices, and ideas as we move toward a paradigm of Accountable Care where reimbursements and incentives are directly driven by health outcomes.

I hope you enjoy the journey, and that you find this forum useful, entertaining, engaging, and thought-provoking.I look forward to our future discussions, and I am looking to you to keep us on point and on our toes.