I just listened to Dr. Stasia Kahn’s latest EMR Survival Tips Audiocast—you can play it in your browser— and I was impressed!
I first met Dr. Kahn at a HIMMS Conference two years ago in Chicago. She’s very active in the EMR and PDF Healthcare community and a real champion for using electronic medical records.
Dr. Kahn’s website has a number of useful resources to help physicians make better use of EMRs, something the doctor has done in her practice since 2005.
I think what I like best about the audiocasts is how approachable Dr. Kahn makes a subject that might be a bit scary to the less technical among us.
I also appreciate the very frank information that she shares. There is a cost to implementing EMR systems, and you can hear the challenges that a small practice might have. I think— and Dr. Kahn concurs— that eventually government incentives will offset this cost.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 offers payments to hospitals and doctors participating in
Medicare and Medicaid programs that adopt and successfully demonstrate meaningful use of certified electronic health record (EHR) technology.
The final ruling may be found in the document titled “Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Electronic Health Record Incentive Program”.
I reviewed the 275 page document (you can download it here) and it isn’t easy to follow. My goal was to find out where Adobe Acrobat and other Adobe offerings could be used, at least at a high level.
My first impressions is that from a technical level it is not a well-authored document and difficult to use. Notable problems with the document:
No navigational bookmarks or links
No Table of Contents
Tables are actually graphic elements and not searchable
Not accessible to the visually impaired
Protected from changes since it is a certified document
There are, however, a number of tables which make it easier to understand the main requirements. In particular, “Table 2: Stage 1 Meaningful Use Objectives and Associated Measures Sorted by Core and
Menu Set” offers a basic overview which is a good starting point.
I used a bit of Acrobat magic to extract Table 2 from the document and added a few checks to areas where I thought Adobe technology could fit in.
You can download the 944K document from the Acrobat.com widget below or directly from this link.
You can click the Continue Reading link below to read more about my thoughts.
