Long-term care providers should be eligible for EHR incentives, providers stress
Federal health officials need to offer long-term care providers incentives to adopt Stage 3 Meaningful Use criteria for electronic health records, a provider group recommended.
In a May 3 roundtable between long-term and post-acute care providers and officials from the federal Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology, roundtable participants said EHR design requirements need to focus on longitudinal care plans, transitions of care and patient assessments. A report summarizing the roundtable's recommendations was released Monday.
Roundtable members stated that federally mandated patient assessments, and data used to fill them in, were important to all providers.
“LTPAC providers assess patients in a range of areas, including skin integrity, gait, fall risk, ambulation, cognitive function, mood, and nutritional status. The ability to continually assess and track the progress of clinically significant events, such as the skin breakdown and care of pressure ulcers, is vital both within and across LTPAC and other care providers,” the report states.
Click here to read the full report.
