According to new College of Healthcare Information Management Executives Chair Drex DeFord, there are several things hindering Meaningful Use attestation at hospitals. "The attestation process could be less challenging, and that has something to do with it," he told FierceHealthIT's Ken Terry in an exclusive interview. "Also, I think organizations have very busy IS departments, and they want to make sure they have everything done and locked down and documented well before they attest to Meaningful Use. In addition, some states are not prepared yet for hospitals to make claims to their Medicaid programs." DeFord also thinks that not every organization is focused on EHR implementation at the moment, which only adds to the challenge. "There's a lot of other work to be done around the metrics and the gathering of the quality data," he added. "As I talk to my peers, there's a lot of head-shaking about how complicated this really turns out to be, compared to the expectations that many of us had when we started our foray into Meaningful Use." Read the full interview