MU – Well Ahead

As of June 9, we reached the thresholds for every required MU measure within our control. Yowser!

The Problem List has been our biggest challenge and the medical, nursing, and coding staff came through as a team to bring us over the line at 81% this morning! The threshold is 80%.

We must maintain meeting criteria for every MU element for the entire 90 day attestation period. We are monitoring daily to assure we are holding the line, and will select the 90-day period that achieves this. Our do or die beginning 90-day date is July 3.

We will be using a new feature in Cerner to track the required quality measures (seven stroke and five venous thrombosis prevention measures). There are no thresholds for these measures in Stage 1, we just need to show that we are able to track this data within the EHR and use the data to work on quality. In Stage 2 MU and beyond we will be required to submit the quality data to CMS electronically.

There are a few elements that require work on Cerner’s end:

• Vital signs tracking is not displaying outcomes (domain wide issue)
• Cerner is still working on setting up a system to give us the ability to provide electronic copies of discharge instructions and medical records upon request – this represents two core measures
• Sometime during the attestation period Cerner will conduct an exchange of our data with another Cerner client to demonstrate the ability to do so
• Cerner is building an interface to allow us to download immunization data directly into the State of Idaho’s immunization registry

While we still have a lot of work to do to make MU, we are Well Ahead and leading the way for all hospitals in Idaho, and especially those in rural areas.