Happy Holidays!

In getting ready to put 2011 away as another successful year, we at CPM are excited about what 2012 will have in store for the field of health care.

Looking at McNickle’s article regarding EMR usability, we believe, wholeheartedly, in the statement that “usability should be considered more than just user satisfaction”.  With the upcoming ARRA Stage 2 and 3 criteria, the movement for health care provider and hospitals to realize that their current systems may not be perfect is facing many organizations.

The parallel benefits of supportiveness, flexibility, ease of learning, effectiveness and efficiency, all mentioned by McNickle, are tenets we hold to be true at CPM.  It’s been said that quality is in the patient’s eyes and with our business supporting humanity; we have not only a great opportunity to deliver this quality, but also a great responsibility.

With the EMR evolution lying in the users’ hands, we at CPM look to have all of the intended audiences work together to make the future; consumer and quality driven.    Realizing that EMR implementation and the CPM Framework are just tools to help healthcare organizations accomplish their patient care goals I would like to draw attention to what Dr. Steve Waldren, MD states in a recent Healthcare IT News article:

“Most people think an EMR solves problems, but an EMR will only amplify problems that already exist in the practice”.

CPM has based the intentional design of the EMR on knowing, at a deep level, the professional practice and workflow needs of an interdisciplinary care team, and has continued to evolve the depth and breadth of that design as the needs of patients, clinicians and organizations evolve.  As 2012 approaches we look forward to a great year for us in terms of continually supporting our consortium clients and welcoming new hospitals and other healthcare settings into our transformation science methodology of creating better usability and care coordination across the continuum of care.

We support this week’s announcement by Health and Human Services which moves the start date for Stage 2 of the meaningful use program from 2013 to 2014.  While this decision will relieve burdens for those who attested to meaningful use in 2011, it also provides more time for vendors and providers/hospitals to prepare to meet the new proposed rules (Stage 2 meaningful use Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) which is scheduled to be published in February of 2012.  At CPM, it is our hope that this delay will also help us, our consortium, and our HIT partners focus on improved usability to best support clinicians and patients thereby creating meaningful care.  There is no question that we all want to “get it right”.

We hope the rest of 2011 will be good for everyone and we look forward to being a part of your 2012.  For those of you that will be attending Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s (IHI’s) 23^rd Annual National Forum, please stop by our Storyboard Presentation Achieving Meaningful Use in Healthcare: The Road to Meaningful Care.  The CPM Consortium has been an active IHI National Node since 2005 and I look forward to seeing many of our consortium members there who are sharing in the mission to create the best practices to improve quality in healthcare.

Blessing to you and yours,

Michelle