Southern Coos Hospital and Health Center in Bandon, OR could potentially gain as much as $1 million in reimbursement for attesting to Meaningful Use Stage 1, The World reports.
After a four year EHR implementation project, Southern Coos hospital leadership can now attest that meaningful use stage 1 standards have been met. Once the attestation is completed, the small, rural hospital is anticipated to receive around $1 million in reimbursement.
“We completed our 90-day validation that we met all standards; we proved we met all the benchmarks,” said Mandy Calvert, IT manager for the hospital who has shepherded the complex, multi-pronged project. “We should be able to attest by Nov. 27.”
The reimbursement will be used to offset the high implementation costs of the EHR implementation. Physicians will now have real time access to communications about patients’ status, both within the hospital and with providers outside the hospital, and increased patient safety.
“We are extremely proud of our staff in every department for completing thousands of hours of extra work to get the electronic health records system up and running,” said Southern Coos Hospital CEO Charles Johnston. “It was a demanding effort and our staff gave its all to finish the task and allow us to meet the federal standards and qualify for significant reimbursements.”
The state of Oregon also offers incentives under its Medicaid program. Southern Coos received $500,000 recently as its first payment and will receive additional payments over a three-year period.
Meaningful Use Stage 1 Criteria & Incentives
Meaningful use includes both a core set and a menu set of objectives that are specific to eligible professionals or eligible hospitals and CAHs. For eligible professionals, there are a total of 24 meaningful use objectives. To qualify for an incentive payment, 19 of these 24 objectives must be met:
- 14 required core objectives
- 5 objectives chosen from a list of 10 menu set objectives.
For eligible hospitals and CAHs, there are a total of 23 meaningful use objectives. To qualify for an incentive payment, 18 of these 23 objectives must be met:
- 13 required core objectives
- 5 objectives chosen from a list of 10 menu set objectives.
Featured image credit: Thomas Hawk via cc
