Meaningful Use Program (MUP) is an initiative that motivates eligible medical providers with payment to utilize a certified electronic health record (EHR). The United States government enacted this scheme in 2009 to promote quality health care for service users by improving safety and efficiency. A meaningful Use Program is needed to promote global adoption and acceptance of electronic health records framework or systems. Electronic Medical Record (EMR), EHR, and Environmental Public Health Program (EPHR) are significantly related to clinical information systems since EMR is a critical element in ambulatory and inpatient CISs. Health professionals utilize EHRs to store, retrieve, and leverage patient information. The essence of MUP to the nursing profession and fundamentally to the Primary Care Physician (PCP) is to promote patient safety, ensure sufficient health information privacy, and minimize health disparities.
There are various goals and objectives of MUP, for instance, promoting quality of care, safety, and efficiency. Nursing providers attain this objective through providing patients’ health care supporters access to diversified health data and implementing central reporting such as public health agencies (Crandall, 2017). The second goal of MUP is engaging patients and their relatives with access to data and skills to manage their health by making reliable decisions. MUP has a motive of improving coordination of care through sharing of critical information among physicians. The initiative also should reduce health disparities by communicating with public health agencies and finally ensuring data privacy. Professionals achieve data security by complying with the applicable law. Most physicians and all healthcare providers endeavor to fulfill all the MUP goals and objectives in my workplace. The initiative is quite effective and affordable since it aims to acquire incentive payment and improve the quality of patient care.
MUP has several strengths and weaknesses, eliminating the need to store patients’ files in vast document cabinets, thus freeing more space for other essentials. It promotes patient access fundamentally to EHR systems that offer portals to permit service users to view their clinical history. However, MUP has weaknesses such as vulnerability to hacking and malpractice liability issues; for example, data could be distorted during the transfer from paper to the EHR system.
The first stage of MUP has various requirements for patient engagement, for instance, sending reminders to service users. This objective depends on patient preference, specifically for follow-up clinics. This MUP requirement promotes service recovery and prevents patients from seeking healthcare in different hospitals. MUP provides service users with electronic access to their hospital information. Moreover, MUP helps physicians make informed decisions, and administer quality care while creating greater efficiencies. The program requires professionals to implement drug-formulary checks and offer a review of care records in case of referrals (Ratwani et al., 2018). Meaningful Use Stage 1 criterion requires drug-allergy interaction examinations to eliminate adverse effects of drug reaction and promote provider collaboration. The second stage of MUP allows health providers to submit clinical lab tests to the EHR to avoid duplicative testing. This phase is also beneficial to population health as it motivates healthcare providers to submit information to immunization registries and sent data electronically to public health agencies.
MUP experiences various challenges such as lack of a comprehensive plan, enough oversight, and several privacy risks. Information insecurity occurs due to the inability to understand individuals who will have access and their roles in data management (Cohen et al., 2018). A preliminary plan occurs due to the employment of untrained staff members in the use of technology. Hospitals should supply support staff with sufficient training to enhance their skills and offer appropriate hardware and software to overcome these challenges. Staff members should eliminate insecurity issues by having full knowledge of people who should have access to service user information and their fundamental roles.
In conclusion, the significance of the Meaningful Use Program to the nursing profession is to improve the quality of care, promote privacy, increase patient safety and reduce health disparities. These primary objectives, for instance, data security, can be achieved by complying with the applicable law. The challenges of MUP include an incomprehensive plan, and a lack of significant oversight. Healthcare centers should avoid these problems by providing sufficient training to staff members on handling electronic data and understanding the role of people who should have access to patient information.
References
Cohen, D. J., Dorr, D. A., Knierim, K., DuBard, C. A., Hemler, J. R., Hall, J. D., Marino, M., Solberg L. I., McConnell, K. J., Nichols, L. M., Nease Jr, D. E. & Balasubramanian, B. A. (2018). Primary care practices’ abilities and challenges in using electronic health record data for quality improvement. Health Affairs, 37(4), 635-643. Web.
Crandall, D. L. (2017). Understanding small primary care practice physicians’ perspectives on Electronic Health Record System decisions and implementation, practice impacts and meaningful use: A qualitative study. University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Ratwani, R. M., Savage, E., Will, A., Arnold, R., Khairat, S., Miller, K., Fairbanks, R. J., Hodgkins, M. & Hettinger, A. Z. (2018). A usability and safety analysis of electronic health records: A multi-center study. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 25(9), 1197-1201. Web.