Meaningful Use?

[smalltownpsych]

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Apparently more meaningless paperwork coming our way. So far our hospital has excluded psychologists from implementation this year but it is coming for all providers eventually. I began reading up on it a bit to see if AI could get an idea of what it is all about and it just gave me a headache so I decided to just post about it here and see what other's have heard or seen with this.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

We were just talking about "meaningful use" in a meeting I attended last week. It sucks is the short version. The long version is it will take more time, be tedious, and ultimately cost each and every clinician money (in lost time/income/sanity).

Read HERE.

Utilizing an electronic medical record system isn't really an issue (even though everything that is out there is junk), but it is more about the latter stages. The Gov't wants to have access to all sorts of fun information (they already do, but it is expanding). Anyhow, they are tracking various pieces of data from EVERY (Medicare) CHART, and their required list of data is growing. Again, this is an issue bc they are tying reimbursement to each step up. Are they data they want proven to increase outcome…no. Are the data they want going to require more time to input and a team of people to ensure that everything is being collected right…yes. Oh, and what are they going to do with this information….well…you don't need to worry about that, as they are doing it to help us. Uh-huh….

 

[smalltownpsych]

We were just talking about "meaningful use" in a meeting I attended last week. It sucks is the short version. The long version is it will take more time, be tedious, and ultimately cost each and every clinician money (in lost time/income/sanity).

Read HERE.

Utilizing an electronic medical record system isn't really an issue (even though everything that is out there is junk), but it is more about the latter stages. The Gov't wants to have access to all sorts of fun information (they already do, but it is expanding). Anyhow, they are tracking various pieces of data from EVERY (Medicare) CHART, and their required list of data is growing. Again, this is an issue bc they are tying reimbursement to each step up. Are they data they want proven to increase outcome…no. Are the data they want going to require more time to input and a team of people to ensure that everything is being collected right…yes. Oh, and what are they going to do with this information….well…you don't need to worry about that, as they are doing it to help us. Uh-huh….

That was my first impression of this, but as a psychologist, I try not to jump to conclusions without any data. Of course, since trying to decipher this kind of junk gives me a headache I figured I would let my colleagues do the work. 😉

I am thinking this would mean more button-clicking to show that I am actually doing something to help my clients instead of just wasting our time because that's what people come to me for is to not get better and recommend this to friends as well. "Go see Dr. Smalltown, we met for 20 sessions and it didn't help with my symptoms at all. You'll love him."

I will need to attend some type of workshop eventually to learn which buttons to click and at what rate and then will have the ethical dilemma of trying to make sure that my button clicking approximates what is actually happening in session as opposed to just meeting the government requirement.