Jackson Hospital Completes Necessary Steps for Meaningful Use | Health

Montgomery, AL- In July, Jackson Hospital became one of the first hospitals in the state to
achieve the first level of the federally mandated requirement to implement and use an integrated
electronic health record (EHR).

Jackson Hospital actually began the process in 2005, well before the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act established incentives for implementing an EHR and reimbursement
penalties for not failing to do so by 2015. In April 2012, the hospital completed the installation
and began the use of computerized physician order entry. It completed the enhancements
necessary to have its EHR certified by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in
2011.

Once each of the computer applications were certified, Jackson Hospital began a 90-day
continuous use validation period during which a number of utilization criteria had to be met,
including 14 required core objectives, and five others chosen from a list of 10 menu set objectives.
A total of 19 the 24 objectives had to be met to achieve validation.

“Although Jackson has been working on the implementation of its EHR for several years, it is
rewarding to have this effort officially validated by CMS, especially when this recognition
includes a share of the Affordable Care Act stimulus money to help pay for this capital
investment,” says Rick Caldwell, vice president and chief operating officer.”

Since these requirements have been met, Jackson Hospital is now officially recognized as having
attained Stage 1 meaningful use. The hospital must maintain this utilization for a period of one
year during which it will begin working on Stage 2 criteria. There are three federally mandated
stages which hospitals must achieve prior to 2015 in order to avoid Medicare reimbursement
penalties.

“In September, we will begin the work necessary to achieve Stage 2 certification,” says Caldwell.
“Although the final rules for stage two have not yet been finalized by CMS, we do know that it
will require even greater physician utilization and will dramatically raise the bar on previously
established clinical decision support criteria.”

Information Source: Jackson Hospital