More thoughts on ‘meaningful use’

I’m looking back over my notes from last month’s HIMSS conference and I came across something from MEDecision. The care management software company, now a subsidiary of Blue Cross and Blue Shield licensee Health Care Service Corp., is defining an electronic health record simply as an “actionable clinical summary.”

That makes sense, given that MEDecision in the past has pushed payer-based health records that were derived from claims and then run through a clinical verification engine of some sort to create clinical summaries. Just before HIMSS, MEDecision also announced a deal to acquire HxTechnologies, which specializes in aggregation of clinical data from lab and imaging systems.

At HIMSS, MEDecision President and COO Scott Storer also told me that because the company now can add real clinical information to the claims data it already processes, this will help providers achieve the type of “meaningful use” required to capture stimulus funding for health IT.

However, in the wake of the recent revelation that claims data can produce inaccurate clinical records, I’m wondering if this is changing this type of strategy. MEDecision is a partner of Google Health, which was blamed for the misinformation in Dave de Bronkart‘s personal health record.

And please, don’t get me started on the low adoption rates of PHRs in general. As you know, I tend to ignore any boasting that someone has a PHR that can revolutionize healthcare.