CHICAGO – As radiologists struggle with whether meaningful use is relevant to them or worth the IT investment, experts are working to educate them on why it matters.

 

Although 90 percent of all radiologists are considered eligible professionals to qualify for meaningful use incentives – which means more than $1 billion could be available to them – they seem to be a bit late jumping on the meaningful use bandwagon.

 

Paul Merrild, senior vice president of solutions management for Merge Healthcare, said initially in ARRA legislation the “overarching concern was that radiology had been excluded from meaningful use.” He said the “a-ha moment” for radiologists came last summer when legislators altered the definition of eligible provider to include more radiologists.

 

“When the Continuing Extension Act of 2010 removed outpatient hospital settings from the ‘hospital-based’ determinant, and CMS’ final rule in July 2010 removed Place of Service (POS) Code 22 to reflect those statutory changes, we knew that almost all remaining radiologists would be eligible for the program,” said Michael Peters, director of legislative and regulatory affairs for the American College of Radiology.

 

Part of what has “led much of the specialty to say this isn’t relevant to me,” said Merrild, is that the core requirements were written from the perspective of a primary care physician.

 

Although the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has provided “some much needed flexibility for specialists through the exclusions from specific core and menu objectives/measures … the regulations still fundamentally require all participants to do the same things,” said Peters. ACR believes it would make more sense if “CMS and ONC required specialists to implement systems and share data that is most pertinent to their unique contributions to patient care,” he added.

 

The problem is most organizations have spent a lot of money on information systems that don’t allow them to collect this data, said Randy Hicks, MD, president of Regional Medical Imaging, a full-service imaging organization based in Flint, Mich.

 

RMI is leveraging technology from Merge Healthcare to make sure its 13 providers are eligible for the

$600,000 in incentives they have coming their way.

 

But Peters said not everyone sees the incentives as worth the cost of any upgrades – financially or otherwise.

 

“We have heard from members who … have decided meaningful use is of questionable clinical value to justify the added expenses, complexities and workflow disruptions,” he said.

 

“There is also no substantial advantage to beginning the program in 2011 versus 2012 in the Medicare version of the EP program,” he added.

 

But Hicks said he believes having this data about patients will help radiologists do a better job. And with a “little tweaking,” he believes it wouldn’t be difficult to get their systems up to speed, without costing a lot of money. It will require organizations to work with their vendor to get it right, he said.

 

“A major educational challenge ACR has faced is the enormous amount of misinformation and sensationalism that has pervaded this program,” said Peters. “ACR is currently working with the Radiology Business Management Association to develop an article intended to debunk common meaningful use myths. This is important because many physicians, practices, and/or vendors may be taking, or not taking, certain steps based on bad information.”