LAS VEGAS -- Meeting federally mandated health information technology (IT) benchmarks will be a top priority for hospital IT departments over the next two years, a survey showed.
That means meeting "meaningful use" standards and transitioning to the new ICD-10 medical coding system, according to a survey of 302 hospital IT executives presented here at the Healthcare Information and Managment Systems Society (HIMSS) conference.
One-third of respondents to the survey said achieving meaningful use was the single most important IT priority to be addressed at their hospital.
"Meaningful use" refers to provisions in the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which was part of the 2009 economic stimulus package. The HITECH Act authorized incentive payments through Medicare and Medicaid to clinicians and hospitals that use EHRs in a "meaningful" way that significantly improves clinical care.
The program offers incentive payments of up to $44,000 per clinician over five years through Medicare and $63,750 per clinician over five years through Medicaid.
More than one-quarter of respondents said they had already proven to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that they have met the government's standard for the first stage of meaningful use of health IT, the survey found.
Criteria for the first stage of meaningful use standards were issued in 2010, and many at the HIMSS conference are eagerly awaiting the Stage II standards, which are expected to be released at the conference on Wednesday.
The survey broke down priorities by category and found that the single most important patient care-related IT issue was ensuring the organization had a fully operational electronic health record.
The single most important financial issue was ICD-10, with two-thirds of respondents saying that implementing the new coding system was the top area of focus for financial IT systems at their organization.
However, that question was asked prior to last week's announcement that HHS would consider delaying the October 2013 start date by which doctors were expected to be using ICD-10.
ICD-10 is the manual most commonly used for coding medical diagnoses on claims for Medicare, Medicaid, and private health insurers. ICD-10 codes differ from current ICD-9 codes in several respects, but the biggest difference is the number of codes -- 68,000 compared with 13,000.
When asked about the top business issue in the health IT that will most influence healthcare, 40% of respondents said healthcare reform, which was unchanged from last year's survey.
The survey also found:
- Clinicians are active participants in IT use, including selecting which program to use.
- About one-quarter of respondents said their organizations have experienced a security breach in the past year; however, less than 1% said securing patient information in their IT systems was the most important IT priority.
- For the first time in a decade, "lack of financial support" for IT was not reported as the top barrier to implementation; rather, lack of staff was the top barrier.
The meeting kicked off just days after the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the number of hospitals using electronic health records had more than doubled (from 16% to 35% during the 2009-2011 time period).