Hospitals fall short on MU

There's good news and bad news in the latest research from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. The good news is that from February to September 2011 there has been a 16% increase (from 25% to 41%) in the number of eligible hospitals saying that they are likely to meet criteria for stage 1 of Meaningful Use. The bad news is that 53% of hospitals say they cannot meet 10 or more of the 14 core requirements set out in stage 1. The survey, Summary of Meaningful Use Readiness, reflects that hospitals increasingly recognize the need to adopt health IT, but also face many challenges as they attempt to transition from paper-based medical charts to digitized medical records.