Providers who use GE's Centricity Practice Solution and Centricity Electronic Medical Records system may not be able to successfully attest to Meaningful Use. GE has reported that it learned of "inaccuracies" with some reports, which may affect the results the providers have received.
In a recent letter sent by GE Healthcare's Vice President and General Manager Michael Friguletto to customers, GE admits that it recently became aware of these inaccuracies, and that "refinements to many of the Meaningful Use functional measure reports are necessary," reports InformationWeek Healthcare. GE flagged three measures in particular as needing possible "immediate" data collection changes to comply with meaningful use: Core 07 - Record Demographics; Core 09 - Smoking Status; and Menu 06 - Patient Specific Education.
GE recommends that customers who have already attested in 2011 should run the reports again for their attestation periods after GE provides updates, which are expected to fix the reports by no later than the end of November. However, the company warns, "If your results are different from those used for attestation, you may need to evaluate if you have still cleared all applicable Meaningful Use thresholds..."
Unfortunately, there may be similar reports of this ilk in the future. Earlier this month we reported that two-thirds of providers surveyed by KLAS said that their EHR vendor had functionality gaps and could not deliver meaningful use for emergency department information systems; some of the worst offenders were some of the largest vendors, including Allscripts, McKesson and Meditech.
To learn more:
- here's a copy of GE's letter
- here's GE's executive summary of the problem (.pdf)
- read this InformationWeek Healthcare article