Childs Medical Clinic uses Greenway Medical Technologies' PrimeSUITE 2011

Greenway Medical Technologies, Inc. announced today that Childs Medical Clinic of Samson, Ala. is the first Greenway customer utilizing the company's integrated electronic health record (EHR), practice management and interoperability solution PrimeSUITE® 2011 to successfully attest and receive payment notice within the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Stage 1 meaningful use incentives program within the Medicare pathway.

In February, Children's Clinic of Muskogee, Okla. received $85,000 in becoming the first Greenway customer to achieve the meaningful use criteria within the Medicaid pathway.

For the Medicare incentives, Childs Medical Clinic satisfied reporting requirements of quality measures after registering for the program March 15 and attesting April 19, according to CMS payment process confirmation.

"The entire process went smoothly for us," said Practice Administrator Jule Childs. "And what we found is that much of the criteria were extremely beneficial to the patient. Being on an EHR, we want to know that the patient also has a meaningful use and experience with our system. We plan to continue to expand our functionality and progress through future stages."

Childs Medical Clinic also utilizes Greenway's integrated PrimePATIENT® online communication portal, and the integrated PrimeEXCHANGE® for the data sharing of lab reports. "We also plan to expand our use of PrimeEXCHANGE to interoperate with our area hospitals. All of these functions are important not only for meaningful use but coordinated care in our region."

For the Stage 1 Medicare incentive program, Childs said the Greenway® Meaningful Use Dashboard was particularly beneficial. "We hit our allowable very early and that was easy to chart, but what really helped was being able to show the type of information that needed to be added to clinical summaries and didn't just hit the criteria, but aided our care plans."

"Greenway is proud of this milestone achievement by Childs Medical Clinic, and is looking forward to a multitude of our customers attesting and receiving meaningful use funds throughout 2011 and beyond," said President and CEO Tee Green. "We are equally pleased to make good on our promise to customers qualifying for the incentives that the ONC-ATCB certification we achieved in October would lead to incentive capture, and that their faith was echoed in the KLAS report this spring."

Released April 12 by KLAS, the healthcare IT industry's leading consumer reporting survey organization, and titled Ambulatory EMR: A KLAS Guide to Meaningful Use Success, the survey of 597 providers using 25 EHR solutions found that "96% of clients expressed confidence that they will get to MU in 2011, which was the highest among all vendors."

The survey measured EHR performance in eight key meaningful use criteria, and found that "Greenway received especially high ratings on the core EMR functionalities of CPOE, problem lists, alerting, and progress notes, as well as the more complicated functionalities of data mining tools and CDS … Greenway is one of the most widely regarded and highest-performing vendors in the EMR landscape."

Added Green, "Taken together, this success to us is one component of our historical dedication to advancing healthcare not only through quality reporting like meaningful use and upcoming Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), but to innovative data sharing and data liquidity for a truly nationwide health information network that crosses all public and private stakeholders and institutions. That is the end goal of quality healthcare in America."