Proposed Meaningful Use Stage 2 requirements could alleviate the administrative burdens associated with clinical quality reporting, according to a Health Affairs blog post. The proposed rules align the 12 clinical quality measures for Meaningful Use with those in other federal programs, including accountable care organizations.
That could make quality reporting easier on hospitals, assuming private payers implement the same 12 measures for their quality programs, the authors write. And doing so would give providers more time to spend improving patient care.
Additionally, the Stage 2 regulations will yield more sources of big data for hospitals. Requiring providers to have at least 10 percent of their patients view, download or transmit to the third party their health information will trigger a large outflow of data, according to Health Affairs.
The rules will help hospitals maximize the potential of big data to drive efficiency, as hospitals can use it to improve predictive modeling, deliver more personalized treatments for patients and better manage population health, according to the post.
With those benefits in mind, hospitals are experimenting with ways to harness big data. For instance, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center launched a new startup that developed an application that aggregates data from various hospital systems, including electronic medical records, to enable "institution-wide analyses of cases to identify opportunities to improve patient care," FierceHealthIT previously reported.
For more information:
- read the Health Affairs blog post
- check out the FierceHealthIT article on big data