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HIMSS: Hospitals Achieving Meaningful Use Milestones

Hospitals are making good progress toward achieving Meaningful Use milestones, a new study by HIMSS suggests.

HIMSS, which surveyed 298 healthcare CIOs between December and February, found that 66 percent had already qualified for Meaningful Use stage 1, while another 4 percent expected to do so before the end of 2012, Information Week reports.

Meanwhile, 75 percent of respondents said they expect to attest for stage 2 in 2014, which as readers probably know is the first year of stage two attestations.

Given the ambitions noted by the CIOs, it’s not surprising to learn that 66 percent of them said they thought their budgets would definitely or probably increase this year. Of the remainder, 15 percent said their budgets would remain level, and 8 percent expected to see a decrease.

Last year, achieving Meaningful Use was the hospital CIOs’ top business objective, named by 24 percent of respondents, but this year, it fell to 15 percent. This year, the top health IT business objective has switched over to survival, with 21 percent saying their key goal was to sustain the financial viability of their organizations. This was followed closely by improving patient care, which came in at 19 percent.

Still, Meaningful Use will obviously stay top of mind for the CIOs, who may be better prepared than last year but still have much to handle.

After all, they expect to make serious money on achieving MU goals, HIMSS concluded. The survey found that about 30 percent of hospital CIOs expected an ROI (Return on Investment)of up to $2 million on stage 1, another 23 percent a return of $2 million to $3 million, and 16 percent expected ROI of $4 million to $5 million.

http://www.hospitalemrandehr.com/2013/03/06/himss-hospitals-achieving-meaningful-use-milestones/