IC3 Beacon Community and Meaningful Use Update

Your Update to All Things Beacon and Meaningful Use

In This Issue

Greetings!

Welcome to the IC³ Beacon Community and Meaningful Use bi-weekly newsletter. You are a valued participant in the HealthInsight Regional Extension Center (REC) and Beacon programs. We hope you find this series of emails educational and informative as we keep you updated on recent program activities. We look forward to working together helping you achieve your Beacon Aims and Meaningful Use goals.

BEACON COMMUNITY UPDATE

Instead of Talking Turkey This Thanksgiving, Talk About the Benefits of Signing Your Family Up for the cHIE.

When you and your family become part of the Clinical Health Information Exchange (cHIE) you help decrease medical error, save precious clinician time and reduce the risk associated with information being scattered among several healthcare providers.

Visit myCHIE.org to learn more!

Download the Beacon Learning Session #3 Presentations Today!

Patients and providers came together on November 10^th for the third installment of the Beacon Learning Sessions. Over eighty people from a variety of healthcare-related fields attended the patient engagement-focused Learning Session.

The keynote speaker, Dave deBronkart (e-Patient Dave), a cancer survivor, shared his experience on how an engaged patient can improve outcomes, inform physicians, and drive health care improvements. Dave teleconferenced in from Washington D.C. to speak to the conference attendees.

Other topics discussed at the Learning Session included everything from social media and your health, new diabetes apps available, and patient portal programs to the Clinical Health Information Exchange (cHIE), living well self-management diabetes classes, and blood pressure monitoring at home.

The Beacon Team would like to thank Health Clinics of Utah, Intermountain Holladay Clinic, Jordan Meadows and Hunter Medical Centers for sharing their best practices at the conference.

Visit the IC³ Beacon Community's event page to download the PowerPoint presentations from the November 10^th Beacon Learning Session.

*Video versions of the presentations will be available the beginning of December*

Beacon Learning Session #3

The IC³ Beacon Community Excited to Have Participated in the 2011 ONC Annual Meeting

Last week, representatives from all 17 Beacon Communities gathered in Washington, D.C. for the 2011 Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) Annual Meeting. The meeting highlighted the successes of the past year and how the various HITECH grantees have demonstrated how health IT is foundational to improving health, modernizing healthcare and reducing costs. FULL ARTICLE>>>

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The Road to Meaningful Use

As a HealthInsight partner you have taken the first steps along the path to Meaningful Use. Ever wonder how many of your colleagues have joined you on this journey? Curious to know what phase they are in or how close they are to attestation? HealthInsight has compiled information in regards to our partners to share with you.

By provider	Nevada	Utah	By provider	Nevada	Utah
With EHR	475	765	Northern	153	787
Without EHR	239	80	Southern	536	30
Total	714	845	Rural	25	28
			Total	714	845

Milestones

One of the ways the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) keeps track of how providers are progressing towards Meaningful Use is with milestones. For Stage 1 of Meaningful Use, the ONC has designated three milestone categories:

Milestone 1: Provider is participating in the REC program.

Milestone 2: Provider is live on an EHR system, generating quality reports, and actively e-prescribing.

Milestone 3: Provider has reached Meaningful Use and has successfully attested via Medicare or Medicaid.

The table below indicates the number of providers who have achieved each milestone thus far.

By provider	Milestone 1	Milestone 2	Milestone 3
Nevada	408	278	28
Utah	348	470	27
Total	756	748	55

UPDATE: Important Information on Registration for the EHR Incentive Programs

This is an updated version of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) registration-related listserv message sent by CMS on Tue Oct 11. This version of the message provides updated language to help providers understand the difference in registration and attestation dates for the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs.

CMS would like to remind eligible professionals (EPs), eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals (CAHs) of the key registration and attestation dates for the EHR Incentive Programs, and provide information to help them successfully register and start their path to payment for 2011. FULL ARTICLE>>>

Provider Spotlight

Gregory Gex, M.D. operates Gex Women's Care, a solo OB/Gyn practice in Las Vegas, Nevada. He and his Business Manager, Maria, opened this Practice with Greenway PrimeSuite as their EHR in 2007. Dr. Gex has been a proponent of EHR technology and he and Maria have been working diligently towards meeting Stage One of Meaningful Use. They have been working with the REC since summer of 2010 and have really "dug in" over the last several months.

Maria has taken advantage of several training opportunities from Greenway PrimeSuite and has had an overall positive experience with the vendor. They have had to overcome significant challenges this summer due to unforeseen issues that they have now resolved successfully. Due to Maria and her staff's dedication to integrating Meaningful Use into their workflow, they anticipate being ready to attest by the end of this November.

Even though they have a relatively low census of Medicaid and Medicare patients, Dr. Gex believes meeting Meaningful Use goes way beyond the financial incentive. He emphatically desires better patient outcomes and a more efficient clinic through the successful leveraging of his EHR technology. He is looking forward to true interoperability as the community based HIE goes live.

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Contact Us

Please contact the REC Team at:

Email: rec@healthinsight.org

Phone: (800) 483-0932

Please contact the IC³ Beacon Team at:

Email: dsmith@healthinsight.org

Phone: 801-892-6655

For more information, visit the IC³Beacon Community website

ONC Awardee Logo

Beacon ONC Logo

This material was prepared by HealthInsight as part of our work as the Regional Extension Center for Nevada and Utah, under grant #90RC0033/01 from the Office of the National Coordinator, Department of Health and Human Services.