The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has launched the next phase of its state Meaningful Use Acceleration Challenge. The challenge, announced in a Health IT Buzz blog post April 3, pits states and territories against each other to see which ones best accelerate the Meaningful Use program through electronic health record system adoption.
Challenge "2.0" is a continuation of last year's challenge, and increases the number of performance measures by which ONC will judge states. ONC's goals include use of EHRs by 50 percent of physicians nationwide, and 80 percent of eligible hospitals receiving Meaningful Use payments by the end of 2013. As of this past January, more than 210,000 providers have adopted/implemented/upgraded or met the Meaningful Use criteria. Blog post