Survey also reveals that challenges still remain in fulfilling meaningful use requirements
Health IT (HIT) will most likely achieve its most significant improvements over the next 12 months by meeting meaningful use, according to a survey conducted among HIT senior management and executives by Stoltenberg Consulting at last month’s HIMSS13 conference in New Orleans, LA.
While a majority of respondents (35%) placed meaningful use in the top spot, 19 percent of respondents identified the areas in which HIT will achieve the most significant improvements as health information exchange, clinical Integration and mobile health, respectively.
“Those hospitals that can successfully achieve meaningful use implementation will benefit greatly from the resulting updated systems, enhanced processes and increased data security,” said Shane Pilcher , vice president of Stoltenberg Consulting. He cautioned that “organizations still need to overcome the hurdles inherent in meeting meaningful use however, before they can reap the benefits of it.”
Survey respondents identified the three greatest challenges in fulfilling meaningful use requirements in their organizations as confusion and/or ambiguity about the regulation itself (29%); competing health IT projects (23%) and lack of resources such as funding, IT skill, talent and time (17%).
“While these challenges certainly impact hospitals of all sizes, they are particularly daunting for rural and community hospitals,” noted Pilcher. “To have the best chance of meeting meaningful use, smaller hospitals should develop an effective plan of action that unites IT, internal administration and clinical providers.”
Emerging Health IT Trends
The Stoltenberg survey also uncovered the top three issues likely to dominate HIT dialogue for the remainder of 2013: Health Information Exchange (62%); Mobile Health (58%) and Clinical Analytics (54%).
Pilcher stated that “like meaningful use, Health Information Exchange, mobile health and clinical analytics can all ultimately have a positive impact on an organization’s bottom line in addition to the ability to improve healthcare delivery, but they also require the type of extensive knowledge, expertise and experience in healthcare IT that might be best accessed through a qualified HIT services provider.”
In fact, according to the Stoltenberg survey, the issues or problems that HIT executives would most likely consult with a specialized IT consulting firm to resolve are: ICD-10 (25%); meaningful use (25%); clinical and business intelligence (23%); cloud computing (21%); and CPOE/clinical systems implementation (20%).
Survey respondents included HIT management, physicians and clinicians representing healthcare providers and payers, government agencies and HIT services vendors, among others.
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