Abt Associates Analyzes Variability in "Meaningful Use" Measures
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and Data Consulting Group, Inc.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is the Nation’s leading research bureau on healthcare quality, efficiency, safety, and effectiveness. The agency has recognized that advances in Healthcare Information Technology (HIT) have the potential to impact the way healthcare is delivered, and the manner in which health records are recorded, exchanged and communicated. Likewise, the U.S. federal government sees HIT as an enabling technology that can vastly improve the accuracy and efficiency of healthcare.
Incentives for the Use of Electronic Health Records
In 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) committed $19.2 billion in financial incentives to promote the increased use of electronic health records (EHR) by healthcare providers and hospitals. On December 30, 2009, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)1 published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on the meaningful use Incentives program. The NPRM describes measures that will demonstrate meaningful use of Electronic Health Records (EHRs), and will be revised for the years 2011, 2013 and 2015.
The AHRQ engaged Abt Associates as a subcontractor to Data Consulting Group Inc. (DCG) to analyze a subset of the measures from the NPRM and assess the sources of potential measure variability. In this exploratory work, Abt Associates focused on developing a methodology to specify measures adequately to support uniform implementation across EHR systems.
Abt Associates Evaluation and Reporting
Led by Mark Spranca, Vice President of Abt Associates, the research team performed the following work for AHRQ:
Evaluated the potential of the United States Healthcare Information Knowledgebase (USHIK) to publish measures and reduce variability in implementation.
Reported illustrative deconstructions of a subset of the measures.
Developed a white paper describing a methodology to evaluate these measures.
Summarized the methodology and results in a presentation to the AHRQ.
Widespread Adoption of EHR Depends on Well Defined Meaningful Use Measures
With this research initiative, Abt Associates is helping shape the implementation and adoption of an important healthcare information technology.
AHRQ has supported the development and introduction of HIT standards that will build a strong foundation for the industry-wide meaningful use of Electronic Health Records. The evaluation performed by Abt Associates and DCG ensures that a definition of meaningful use is understood, consistently used, and measured.
When meaningful use measures are inadequately specified there will be variability in their implementation. To assure that the measures generated from different EHRs are comparable, developers will need additional specification to assure uniformity. The methodology presented by Abt Associates provides a process to derive the full measure specification.
"Defining measurable data elements that comprise meaningful use is critical to supporting healthcare reform," concludes Mark Spranca. "With this research initiative, Abt Associates is helping shape the implementation and adoption of an important healthcare information technology."
