FFH achieves ‘Meaningful Use Stage 2’ designation

“Meaningful Use” is a set of objectives defined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for hospitals to follow in order to receive Electronic Health Records Incentive Payments, avoid penalties and promote the best health care possible.
Meaningful Use currently consists of two phases, and according to November 2014 statistics from CMS, only 17 percent of all hospitals in the United States have successfully achieved Stage 2 of Meaningful Use. Franklin Foundation Hospital is in that elite group.
Some of the newer physician-based applications required to achieve Stage 2 include computerized physician order entry, physician documentation, electronic progress notes and Dragon voice recognition software. The physicians who worked to help FFH attain Stage 2 are Drs. Rebecca Accardo, Lianter Albert, Roland Degeyter, Guillermo Delgado, Steve McPherson, John Osborne, Donna Tesi and Keyna Whitney.
The clinical and support staff also worked to help achieve Stage 2 using new processes such as electronic medication administration records, patient-specific education documents, summary of care documents, and patient portal registration.
In September 2014, due primarily to the combined efforts of doctors and nurses, FFH received its fourth incentive payment from CMS, this time for $152,332. The total EHR incentive payment amount received by FFH since the implementation of Meaningful Use is $1,433,937.