Less than 10% of Hospitals can meet meaningful use

Fewer than 1 in 10 hospitals is prepared to meet most of the meaningful-use requirements to qualify for federal subsidy payments for electronic health-record systems under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to a survey by HIMSS Analytics, the market analysis arm of the Chicago-based Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. This data point was drawn from an ongoing survey by HIMSS Analytics that included 687 hospitals. The questioning was begun before the final rule on meaningful use was released in July, fixing the number of core and so-called "menu" requirements at 14 and 10 respectively. Thus the HIMSS Analytics survey report includes responses on 12 of the 14 core measures and eight of the 10 menu requirements, according to a news release. Only 9.6% of hospitals participating in the survey indicated that they are capable of meeting the 12 core measures, according to the report.