Clinicians and industry experts convene to discuss meaningful use of EHR technology at HIMSS conference

Leading industry experts and clinicians of pioneering CPOE installations will join an interactive Town Hall session, “Meaningful Use When It Comes to Medications in the Workflow,” at the HIMSS Annual Conference, to be held at the Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta, Georgia. The Town Hall will open the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Pavilion sessions on Monday, March 1, 2010, at 1:30 p.m., in the exhibit hall, booth #8069. The session is sponsored by First DataBank, a leading provider of drug databases that drive patient safety.

“Meaningful Use When It Comes to Medications in the Workflow”

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 authorizes the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to provide reimbursement incentives for eligible professionals and hospitals who are successful in becoming “meaningful users” of certified electronic health record (EHR) technology. The Medicare EHR incentive program will provide incentive payments to eligible professionals, eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals that are meaningful users of certified EHR technology. The proposed Stage 1 criteria for meaningful use includes both CPOE and eprescribing as well as electronically capturing health information in a coded format, using that information to track key clinical conditions, communicating that information for care coordination purposes and initiating the reporting of clinical quality measures and public health information.

Town Hall participants will discuss how to make the proposed “meaningful use” standards truly meaningful to end users of healthcare information systems when it comes to the use of electronic medication information in their daily workflow. Panelists have been chosen for their experience with complex CPOE installations at hospital systems which have consistently been named to the prestigious “100 Most Wired Hospitals and Health Systems” list, an annual survey conducted by Hospitals and Health Networks. In addition, the panel will include a pharmacist and expert on the prescription transmission side of the equation.

Panelists include the following health information technology clinicians and industry experts:

• Gerard A. Burns, MD, MBA, Chief Medical Information Officer, MedStar Health
• Anne M. Bobb, RPh, Clinical Informatics Pharmacist, Department of Quality and Clinical Informatics, Northwestern Memorial Hospital
• Thomas Bizzaro, RPh, Vice President, Health Policy and Industry Relations, First DataBank, Inc.

Following the Town Hall session, HIMSS attendees may speak with a drug data expert to learn more about how First DataBank’s drug database solutions address “meaningful use” standards at the company’s exhibit booth, #5333.