NUR-621 Implementing Meaningful Use Assignment
Grand Canyon University NUR-621 Implementing Meaningful Use Assignment-Step-By-Step Guide
This guide will demonstrate how to complete the Grand Canyon University NUR-621 Implementing Meaningful Use Assignment assignment based on general principles of academic writing. Here, we will show you the A, B, Cs of completing an academic paper, irrespective of the instructions. After guiding you through what to do, the guide will leave one or two sample essays at the end to highlight the various sections discussed below.
How to Research and Prepare for NUR-621 Implementing Meaningful Use Assignment
Whether one passes or fails an academic assignment such as the Grand Canyon University NUR-621 Implementing Meaningful Use Assignment depends on the preparation done beforehand. The first thing to do once you receive an assignment is to quickly skim through the requirements. Once that is done, start going through the instructions one by one to clearly understand what the instructor wants. The most important thing here is to understand the required format—whether it is APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.
After understanding the requirements of the paper, the next phase is to gather relevant materials. The first place to start the research process is the weekly resources. Go through the resources provided in the instructions to determine which ones fit the assignment. After reviewing the provided resources, use the university library to search for additional resources. After gathering sufficient and necessary resources, you are now ready to start drafting your paper.
How to Write the Introduction for NUR-621 Implementing Meaningful Use Assignment
The introduction for the Grand Canyon University NUR-621 Implementing Meaningful Use Assignment is where you tell the instructor what your paper will encompass. In three to four statements, highlight the important points that will form the basis of your paper. Here, you can include statistics to show the importance of the topic you will be discussing. At the end of the introduction, write a clear purpose statement outlining what exactly will be contained in the paper. This statement will start with “The purpose of this paper…” and then proceed to outline the various sections of the instructions.
How to Write the Body for NUR-621 Implementing Meaningful Use Assignment
After the introduction, move into the main part of the NUR-621 Implementing Meaningful Use Assignment assignment, which is the body. Given that the paper you will be writing is not experimental, the way you organize the headings and subheadings of your paper is critically important. In some cases, you might have to use more subheadings to properly organize the assignment. The organization will depend on the rubric provided. Carefully examine the rubric, as it will contain all the detailed requirements of the assignment. Sometimes, the rubric will have information that the normal instructions lack.
Another important factor to consider at this point is how to do citations. In-text citations are fundamental as they support the arguments and points you make in the paper. At this point, the resources gathered at the beginning will come in handy. Integrating the ideas of the authors with your own will ensure that you produce a comprehensive paper. Also, follow the given citation format. In most cases, APA 7 is the preferred format for nursing assignments.
How to Write the Conclusion for NUR-621 Implementing Meaningful Use Assignment
After completing the main sections, write the conclusion of your paper. The conclusion is a summary of the main points you made in your paper. However, you need to rewrite the points and not simply copy and paste them. By restating the points from each subheading, you will provide a nuanced overview of the assignment to the reader.
How to Format the References List for NUR-621 Implementing Meaningful Use Assignment
The very last part of your paper involves listing the sources used in your paper. These sources should be listed in alphabetical order and double-spaced. Additionally, use a hanging indent for each source that appears in this list. Lastly, only the sources cited within the body of the paper should appear here.
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Sample Answer for NUR-621 Implementing Meaningful Use Assignment
The meaningful use can be defined as the utilization of certified electronic health records (EHR) technology in a meaningful manner such as electronic prescribing for instance and ensuring that the certified EHR technology connect in a way that enables the electronic exchange of health information to enhance the quality of care (CDC, 2020). Essentially, the meaningful use is vital since the efficient exchange of data between health care professionals, patients, and insurers is crucial in improving patient care, security and safety of data, and the entire IT system in health care field. According to CDC (2020), the concept of meaningful use is anchored on five fundamental pillars of health outcomes policy main concerns that include enhancing quality of life, efficiency, safety, and reducing health disparities, involving patients and their families in their care, enhancing care coordination, enhancing population and public health, and guaranteeing sufficient privacy and security safeguards for personal health information. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to delve into implementation of meaningful use. Specifically, the paper will describe the three stages of meaningful use and their measures and explain the challenges and barriers that health care facilities encounter in implementing each stage of the meaningful use.
The Three Stages of Meaningful Use and their Measures
The Meaningful Use initiative by the Medicare is categorized into three stages. Every stage is building on the preceding one over some years in an effort to expand EHR usage to ever increasing large patient population with variety of health care processes. The first stage of the meaningful use involves emphasis on data capture and sharing on EHR technology. Here health care providers are needed to focus on keeping health information electronically in a consistent format that facilitates access to the information by the authorized persons. Moreover, this stage also concentrates on trailing clinical conditions through utilization of EHR for effective care coordination, using the information obtained to initiate assessment and reporting information on both public health and clinical quality, and utilizing EHR for better engagement of patients in their healthcare provision. Essentially, every stage in the meaningful use requires the providers to meet certain indentified core objectives and prearranged number of the menu objectives. Therefore, the measures needed to realize the requirements for stage 1 of the meaningful use include realization of all the required 13 core objectives and also five of the existing Menu Objectives. Besides, all eligible providers, irrespective of the stage should meet nine clinical quality measures to achieve meaningful use requirements.
The meaningful use stage 2, which began in the year 2014, is characterized by advanced clinical processes. This stage maintains the fundamental core and menu structure from stage 1. This stage brings new objectives and measures and also higher standards that require health care providers to expand EHR capabilities to a greater segment of their patient populations. The stage will involve further incorporation of lab results, e-prescribing, and elaborate sharing of summaries of patient care. Overall, the objectives of stage 2 of meaningful use are to enhance patient care through effective patient involvement, care coordination, and clinical decision support. At this point, it is clear that providers who seek incentives for meaningful use should encourage patients to take active role in their care (Health Catalyst, 2020). Regarding measures for stage 2 meaningful use, there are exist 19 measures for hospitals and 20 for professional. Consequently, hospitals must achieve 16 core objectives and three out of six menu objectives. For professionals, 17 core objectives and three out of six menu objectives must be achieved (Health Catalyst, 2020).
On the other hand, meaningful use stage 3 involves improved outcomes. This stage began in 2016. Stage 3 seeks to advance clinical
EHR practices of stage 2 and improve them. The objective in this stage is to enhance the quality of exchanged health information, which will ultimately result in enhanced patient health on a big scale. This stage will also help health providers by ensuring effectively and easily access comprehensive patient data. Moreover, the public health issues will also be minimized with help of EHR. Essentially, the stage 3 goal involves a more pool of information network ranging from lab reports to information on immunization. Taken together, the ultimate intention of meaningful use stage 3 is to simplify the program, enhance patient outcomes, and push for interoperability between EHRs.
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Regarding measures, CMS (2020) postulate that stage 3 involves eight measures and objectives for eligible professionals and hospitals. All providers are needed to attest to one set of objectives and measures. To realize requirements of stage 3, providers are required to use technology approved to the 2015 Edition. However, providers with technology certified to a mix of the 2015 and 2014 Editions can only attest the requirements of stage 3 if the set of technologies would not prevent them from attaining stage 3 measures. Meaningful use stage 3 is characterized by flexibility with some objectives to enable providers to select measures that are more crucial to the patient population or practice they serve. The objectives and their measures include;
Health Information Exchange
Providers are required to attest to all the three measures and must realize the standards for a minimum of two measures to attain the objective.
Coordination of Care through Patient Engagement
It is mandatory for providers to attest to all three measures and attain the standards for a minimum of two measures to meet the objective.
Public Health Reporting
It is mandatory for eligible providers to report on two measures while eligible hospitals should report on four measures.
Challenges and Barriers Faced by Facilities in Implementing each Stage of Meaningful Use
The adoption and meaningful use of EHR systems is an essential national goal, which has substantially increased in the recent years. However, there are concerns about the unique challenges in the meaningful use of the EHR. Generally, the challenges may range from limited resources to poor infrastructure issues (Adler-Milstein et al., 2015). However, this section will describe barriers and challenges in implementing meaningful use in each of the three stages.
Stage 1
The focus on this stage is capturing and sharing data on EHR technology. However, the challenges and barriers in realizing the objectives is failure of meaningful use to operate as required because of poor integration of technologies required into existing systems, the technologies may also be immature. Moreover, the meaningful use can potentially interrupt patient care due to workflow modifications. The other possible challenge is that meaningful use expectation may go beyond the practice and healthcare setting making it difficult to effectively implement the existing needs. Furthermore, focus on capturing and sharing data on EHR technology will likely lead to consolidation of EHR market, which brings various concerns such as massive financial requirements in migration of data. Moreover, migrating EHRs at the time of meaningful use reporting presents a significant challenge where one EHR may tend to phase out the other that is being executed. Therefore, satisfying meaningful use needs may require sustaining both needs to achieve reporting obligations, which is extremely challenging.
Stage 2
This stage is characterized by advanced clinical processes. The stage stresses on providing the patients with greater access to their health information through electronic means. However, there is no standard for patient access, which is a significant challenge for many providers. Besides, this stage pushed sustaining more exchanges of health information but failed to provide how it will happen, which presents a challenge of financial sustainability. This stage also contained a proposal to incorporate core and menu objectives to motivate eligible providers to enhance transfer of data electronically to attain certain set thresholds. However, the intricacy of selling technology does not auger well with the compulsory public requirement on pricing information (Yen et al., 2017).
Stage 3
Although, the ultimate intention of meaningful use stage 3 is to simplify the program, enhance patient outcomes, and push for interoperability between EHRs, the interoperability is not found at a fair cost and practices. There are proprietary barriers, more costs, and seemingly lack of pressure to eliminate these barriers by relevant stakeholders. Moreover, Stage 3 seeks to advance clinical EHR practices of stage 2 and improve them. As such, there is need for more features or functions to help in achieving this objective. However, some of these features or functions are not properly tested before being implemented.
Conclusion
The meaningful use is vital in facilitating the efficient exchange of data between health care professionals, patients, and insurers is crucial in improving patient care, security and safety of data, and the entire IT system in health care field. Ultimately, the implementation of three stages will enable providers to deliver best possible care, better coordination of care, facilitate information sharing with patients and their families and also among the providers, facilitate communication between providers, easy access to information and data to foster faster diagnosis of health issue, minimize error, and provision of quality, safe, and cost-effective care.
References
Adler-Milstein, J., DesRoches, C. M., Kralovec, P., Foster, G., Worzala, C., Charles, D., … & Jha, A. K. (2015). Electronic health record adoption in US hospitals: progress continues, but challenges persist. Health affairs, 34(12), 2174-2180.
CDC. (2020). Introduction | Meaningful Use | CDC. Cdc.gov. Retrieved 22 July 2020, from https://www.cdc.gov/ehrmeaningfuluse/introduction.html.
CMS. (2020). Stage 3 Program Requirements for Providers Attesting to their State’s Medicaid Promoting Interoperability (PI) Programs | CMS. Cms.gov. Retrieved 23 July 2020, from https://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Legislation/EHRIncentivePrograms/Stage3Medicaid_Require.
Health Catalyst. (2020). Stage 2 Meaningful Use Measures and Reporting Solutions. Health Catalyst. Retrieved 23 July 2020, from https://www.healthcatalyst.com/meaningful-use/.
Yen, P. Y., McAlearney, A. S., Sieck, C. J., Hefner, J. L., & Huerta, T. R. (2017). Health information technology (HIT) adaptation: refocusing on the journey to successful HIT implementation. JMIR medical informatics, 5(3), e28.
Sample Answer 2 for NUR-621 Implementing Meaningful Use Assignment
Technology remains an important part of healthcare delivery today because of the benefits that it provides. Electronic health records (EHRs) systems remain of the most significant advancements in healthcare information technologies. A core idea based on the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act that was enacted under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) is the meaningful use program. The basis of the meaningful use is to encourage eligible healthcare professionals to utilize the EHRs technology in appropriate way by sharing and exchanging information seamlessly and effectively to enhance care delivery and patient care outcomes (Penner, 2017). As part of the Recovery Act of 2009, this incentive program is intended to fast-track the implementation of health information technology (HIT) in primary care practices and hospitals across the country. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) renamed the HER Incentive Program to Promoting Interoperability (PI) programs to ascertain its focus on enhancing patients’ access to health information (CMS 2018). The change of name is also meant to reduce the time and cost needed by providers to attain compliance with the program’s requirements. The purpose of this paper is to describe the meaningful use incentive program that aims at providing financial incentives and improving quality, safety and efficiency in care. The paper describes the three main stages of the incentive program and their measures, and explains the challenges and barriers that facilities encounter in implementing each stage of the model.
Description of the Three Stages of Meaningful Use and their Measures
Ineffective communication among providers and patient, incomplete documentation and misaligned incentives as well as errors in billing and coding and lost or inaccurate orders were some of the issues affecting the American healthcare system before the integration and use of electronic health records (EHRs) systems and other health information records (Penner, 2017). In her paper, Reisman (2017) asserts that despite massive efforts and investment in health information systems and technology, and several years of broader availability, the promised benefits of EHRs are yet to be fully attained. As a result, the government through HITECH and Recovery Acts rolled out the Meaningful Use program to incentivize physicians and other healthcare providers to use EHRs based on their eligibility to enhance quality and safe care. The Act offered $35 billion in incentives to not only promote but also expand the adoption and utilization of EHRs by qualifying hospitals, and healthcare professionals.
The Act proposed five-year timeline, beginning in 2011, and included three phases of the program under the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Every stage of program has its set of measures that providers should embrace and demonstrate as meaningful use of EHR technology. The implication is that they should deploy the technology to improve quality, safety, and efficiency in patient care.
The first stage of meaningful use is data capturing and sharing. According to the CMS, the stage was to occur between 2011 and 2012. The stage focused mainly on documentation uniformity, how the information should be captured and the structure of presenting it (CMS, 2017). The measures at this stage included using information in tracking key clinical conditions, communication of information for care coordination processes and initiation of reporting of clinical quality measures and public health information. The other measure at this stage is to utilize information in engaging patients and their families in care delivery. The implication of this stage is that clinical data should be captured electronically and patients get access to a digital copy of their health records.
The second stage entailed expansion of the EHR system to enhance care coordination with the aim of advancing clinical processes among facilities and providers. According to HealthIT.GOv, (n.d) stage two was to be implemented in 2014. The measures at this stage include increased requirements for e-prescribing and incorporation of laboratory results, electronic transmission of patient care summaries in different settings, and more patient-controlled or based data and information. Accordingly, stage two required professionals and health organizations to use certain vocabularies like SNOMED CT, RxNORM, and LOINC to enable cross-system interpretation of the clinical data and information (Penner, 2017). The stage required providers to transport clinical data from one system to another using Direct Project protocol. Imperatively, CMS’s modified stage 2 was released in 2015 and consolidated stages 1 and 2 into a new program. CMS changes reduced the complexity of the measures and carried some of objectives to stage three.
With changes to the naming of the incentive program, CMS incorporated new measures in stage three. Beginning in 2018, all qualifying physicians and organizations are mandated to participate in stage three. The measures include e-prescribing, improving of quality, safety and efficiency with the aim of enhance health outcomes, decision support for national high-priority situations and increased patient access to self-management tools (Wani & Malhotra, 2018). The measures also include access to comprehensive patient data through a strong health information exchange system and improving population health. Stage three measures also include maintenance of active medication list, and allergy list, protections for electronic health information, and recording of patient demographics. The CMS is currently using stage 3 measures to ensure that providers and healthcare organization embrace and adopt electronic health records and use them in a meaningful way to attain the financial incentives.
Challenges and Barriers Facilities Face in Implementing Each Stage of Meaningful Use
The implementation of meaningful measures at different stages or phases of the process provide significant benefits to care providers and facilities through the incentives and enhanced flow of information. However, as an aspect of electronic health records (EHRs) many believe that inherent challenges may hinder the full realization of these benefits (Penner, 2017). The implication is that stakeholders at each stage continue to encounter challenges and hurdles that must be addressed effectively. A core challenge at each stage is interoperability or the ability of various EHRs systems or software to exchange information for different providers to use it in making decisions (Reisman, 2017). Interoperability is a core aspect of EHRs to attain a complete picture of a patient’s health. Interoperability remains a significant challenge for providers to develop a system that will enables transfer of information across networks and provider systems. Attaining proper and effectiveness coordination lead to better health outcomes for patients.
Measures like information tracking to assess clinical conditions and transmission of patient care summaries in multiple settings present challenges to providers due to the need for patient privacy and confidentiality. Concerns about medical privacy with EHRs are not new and stakeholders believe that the threat from cyberattacks and hacking reduce the security and safety of EHRs and may lead to protracted legal issue (Wani & Malhotra, 2018). Common privacy concerns at each stage of the program include unauthorized access to records, tampering with records and the potential risk of losing information as a result of natural disaster. The meaningful use incentives have assisted in boosting the adoption of EHRs among physicians but at the same moment presented negative aspects. These include reduced efficiency, additional clerical load and increased risk of professional burnout (Rathert et al., 2019). Therefore, the measures at each stage have increased burden among healthcare providers.
The measures at stage two presents certain hurdles that include increased patient engagement requirements, longer reporting periods and higher thresholds that many providers and healthcare organizations cannot meet. Increasing the thresholds will push providers to make the information more of a routine habit, which may come with additional pains for the providers and require them to modify their workflow appropriately. The cost of implementing each stage requires additional organizational resources and stakeholder support (Wani & Malhotra, 2018). The exchange of health information across multiple settings implies that all facilities requiring any information should develop and integrate and effective electronic health records system which is costly for small physician practices.
Conclusion
Meaningful use is an incentive program by federal government’s agencies to expand and promote the use of EHRs for better outcomes and decisions making. The program contains measures that providers must follows to ensure that they have attained its goals. However, as the essay demonstrates, many measures of the program present challenges to stakeholders in their settings. The implication is that all involved in this program should develop strategies to mitigate the challenges for better adoption of the incentive program in different practice settings.
References
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) (2017). 2017 Program Requirements.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) (2018). Stage 3 Program Requirements for
Eligible Hospitals, CAHs and Dual-Eligible Hospitals Attesting to CMS. https://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Legislation/EHRIncentivePrograms/Stage3_RequieEH
HealthIT.Gov (n.d). What is meaningful use? https://www.healthit.gov/faq/what-meaningful-use
Penner, S. J. (2017). Economics and financial management for nurses and nurse leaders (3rd
ed.). New York, NY: Springer Publishing. ISBN-13: 9780826160010
Rathert, C., Porter, T. H., Mittler, J. N., & Fleig-Palmer, M. (2019). Seven years after
Meaningful Use: Physicians’ and nurses’ experiences with electronic health records. Health care management review, 44(1), 30-40.
Reisman, M. (2017). EHRs: the challenge of making electronic data usable and interoperable.
Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 42(9), 572.
Wani, D., & Malhotra, M. (2018). Does the meaningful use of electronic health records improve
patient outcomes? Journal of Operations Management, 60, 1-18.