Hospital Quality Reporting: The Hidden Requirements in Meaningful Use

Author:

Jane Metzger, Melissa Ames, Jared Rhoads

The industry focus on the functional requirements for HITECH meaningful use has led many to not pay enough attention to what will be required to capture the data for the 15 quality measures for hospitals. Meaningful use requires that every data element be available in the certified EHR, and measure specifications and data dictionaries are very clear about the type of documentation required, in particular when it is a physician order, a diagnosis, or a reason why a clinical intervention (such as a discharge medication or VTE prophylaxis) is not clinically appropriate for a particular patient.

We deconstructed the 15 hospital measures into the unique data elements and types and sources of electronic documentation needed.  We found that even hospitals with core systems such as reg/ADT and laboratory who have met the explicit data capture requirements for HITECH Stage 1 (CPOE for medications, problem list, etc.) will only have 35 percent of the data needed for the hospital measures. The remaining 65 percent are the hidden requirements of meaningful use.

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