I am going through an analysis for my client, a hospital chain who has already installed EHR and CPOE to see if they should change their strategic direction to get the ARRA money, or continue along their original course.
It does not have to be an either or decision. Their options are not do go for MU, to go for all of the money, to go for it at some combination of their hospitals, or to go for it later. With so many unknowns, it may be best to slow down and evaluate the options. 2011 is around the corner, however you have five years, until 2015 until the penalties begin.
What’s your take?
Pale Rhino Consulting 
Nice blogsite, Paul. Insightful and provocative questions!
Meaningful Use / HITECH seems to be a fact of life. Here’s an hypothesis – Pursuing DHS’s vision of “meaningful use” is of little or no difference than following your existing EMR strategy”. Complying with Meaningful Use might require some timing changes, and will certainly take some effort to measure yourself against the governement’s yardstick. Otherwise, I see the government taking less of a leadership role than one of “following from behind” the industry and pointing in the direction we are all going anyway.
So, an interesting question might be “what is the incremental effort associated with HITECH’s Meaningful Use, over the lifetime of your EHR programs”? Any thoughts on that? @JayRFisher …
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Thanks Jay. I think at a minimum there are a number of strategic issues to address with regard to timing. There need not be a rush toward 2011. Providers can still attain 100% compliance in 2013. However, the unknowns exceed the knowns. What will be included in Stages 2 & 3? How does one perform a cost benefit analysis against unknown requirements for stages that may each have a price tag to the provider in excess of five million dollars. Further, if one tries to pass the Meaningful Use audit, what probability to they have of succeeding?
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