Meeting the criteria for meaningful use stage 1 is associated with increased quality of care, especially among lower-performing hospitals, according to a study in Health Services Research.
Researchers examined electronic health record adoption and use information from Health Information and Management Systems Society Analytics and hospital characteristics from Inpatient Prospective Payment System. Hospitals were assigned scaled quality process scores from 0 to 100 using data found on CMS's Hospital Compare website.
Results showed hospitals that met the criteria for Meaningful Use Stage 1 saw an average 0.35 to 0.49 percentage point increase in quality scores forheart attack, heart failure and pneumonia treatment. Hospitals that started in the bottom quartile of baseline quality saw the largest increase (1.16 to 1.61 percentage points across the same three conditions).
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