The American Recovery And Reinvestment Act - 784 Words

Introduction The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed into law in 2009, includes the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act known as the HITECH Act. The act defined specific requirements for receiving financial incentives for ‘meaningful use’ of the electronic health record (EHR). Hospitals and providers could begin implementation of the requirements in 2011 to receive the incentives by meeting specific objectives, after 2015 failure to meet meaningful use requirements will result in penalties. Meaningful use is divided into 3 stages and each stage has objectives and requirements specific to that stage. Hospitals and providers must meet requirements for Stage 1 of meaningful use for two years before†¦show more content†¦This system has proven success in working with hospitals of this size. The hospital already utilizes many pieces of patient equipment which have platforms which interface easily with the Cerner ®. This will allow t he nursing, pharmacy, physician and respiratory care staff to pull patient care data from the devices into the on line documentation forms. Cerner ® is certified for meaningful use. Features of Cerner ® System Stage 1 involves adoption and implementation of an EHR system and data gathering. In this stage hospitals must meet 11 core objectives and select 5 menu objectives for a total of 16. (CMS.gov) Many of the documentation components of Cerner ® will aid in meeting the requirements of stage 1. Specific features Include: †¢ Power Chart is the clinical documentation software for Cerner ®. This component meets many of the stage 1 objectives, examples include: o Computerized provider order entry (CPOE) is a significant piece of stage 1 meaningful use. CPOE in Power Chart allows for disease specific order sets decreasing the amount of free texting entries and therefore decreasing the incident of errors. Power Chart also interfaces with the hospital