Snuggled away under Title IV of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Congress’ response to the Great Recession was the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. Among other things, the HITECH Act provided incentives for providers of medical services to adopt electronic health records (EHR) through ‘Meaningful Use’ (MU). Although primarily aimed at stimulating economic activity and creating jobs, the framers of the law hoped that the application of information technology to the provision of medical services would improve healthcare. Medical Transcription Billing, Corp. (NASDAQ: MTBC) (NASDAQ: MTBCP), through its integrated digital transcription and patient charting services, is showing how that can be done.
MTBC’s charting services are designed to help physicians generate accurate, timely patient charts and better manage their time. Providers can conveniently send in digital audio dictations, and MTBC transcribes complete patient charts directly to their EHR portal. A patient chart is a complete record of a patient’s key clinical data and medical history that includes demographics, vital signs, diagnoses, medications, treatment plans, progress notes, problems, immunization dates, allergies, radiology images, and laboratory and test results. With MTBC’s charting services, doctors, physician assistants and other medical professionals can have their audio patient progress notes transcribed and the information entered into the appropriate EHR.
The integrated charting services are a core part of MTBC’s proprietary EHR, ChartsPro, the adoption of which will not only make delivery of service more efficient, but allow practitioners to reach ‘Meaningful use’ standards. ‘Meaningful Use’, under the HITECH Act, is the use of certified EHR technology, like ChartsPro, to improve the quality and safety of healthcare. MU sets objectives that providers must meet in order to qualify for the Medicare, Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance, and Health Insurance Marketplace programs administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
MU objectives were set to roll out in three stages. The first stage had an implementation deadline of year-end 2012 and involved procedures and technology to capture data and share it. It was expected that, by that time, 80 percent of patients would have records that employed a certified EHR technology. In August 2016, a survey conducted by Medscape (http://nnw.fm/6BwP8), a free online resource for physicians and health professionals, found that 91 percent were currently using an EHR system but that, at the end of 2012, just 74 percent were.
Stage two, with an implementation deadline of year-end 2014, had two core objectives. Firstly, eligible professionals were being encouraged to text patients by using ‘secure electronic messaging to communicate with patients on relevant health information’; and, secondly, hospitals must ‘automatically track medications from order to administration using assistive technologies in conjunction with an Electronic Medication Administration Record (eMAR)’.
MTBC’s digital transcription and patient charting services are fully compliant with MU standards, and a new menu set objective in MU stage two is included. This allows progress notes to be created, edited and signed by the practitioner. Objectives and measures for Stage three include increased thresholds, advanced use of health information exchange functionality, and an overall focus on continuous quality improvement.
Curating patient data is important to the advance of medical science, but a doctor burdened by data collection is one with less time for patients. With the overload of documentation and clerical responsibilities brought on by EHR, having an integrated charting service such as that offered by MTBC is essential.
For more information, visit www.mtbc.com, and see the company’s fact sheet at http://ir.mtbc.com/events.cfm.
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