WESTLAKE, Ohio — Hyland Software Inc. has developed OnBase software to help small health care providers meaningfully use health information technology.
The OnBase software is designed to handle paper-based content that the MEDITECH health care information system doesn’t in an affordable, easy-to-manage way so health care providers can comply with new “meaningful use” rules.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 authorizes the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to reimburse health care providers for their investments in health information technologies — if the providers meaningfully use the technologies.
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On Jan. 13, CMS published two rules that tell providers what meaningful use means, according to Health Data Management. While the public comments on these proposed rules, an interim final rule from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has set initial standards, Health Data Management said.
For users of the MEDITECH health information system, the meaningful use rules added to old challenges. MEDITECH has been a leader in health care information systems since 1969, unifying clinical, administrative and financial information with its applications. More than 2,200 acute care, long-term care and home health care organizations and physician practices use MEDITECH products and services.
For many MEDITECH users — smaller health care providers with limited IT staffs and budgets — the system “is their single source for almost everything — it’s good at managing patient information, as well as data in administrative areas like accounts payable,” Hyland Software said in a release.
But the MEDITECH system doesn’t handle paper, which also is needed for these administrative processes — and to comply with meaningful use standards.
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“Many hospitals are well on their way to managing patient data with some kind of technology,” said Susan deCathelineau, health care manager for Hyland Software, in her company’s release. “But now, there’s a clear need to be able to manage the 25 percent of content — physician notes, EKGs, consent forms — that exists outside of that technology.”
Hyland’s OnBase products are particularly good at integrating paper-based information with electronic record systems. So Hyland Software developed enterprise content management (ECM) software that works with the MEDITECH system. “We took what we learned from the Valco Data Systems acquisition and its product to develop the OnBase for MEDITECH solution,” deCathelineau said.
The technology pairing seems to be working. “In many instances, MEDITECH is the right technology to handle our data,” Dimitri Cruz, chief information officer of Bayonne Medical Center in New Jersey, said in the Hyland release. “But the push to meet ‘meaningful use’ forced us to realize that it’s not enough — we needed ECM.
“The technology is critical in today’s health care environment,” Cruz said. “It brings together data and paper-based content to not only create a more complete patient record, but also to help us work smarter in administrative departments. By going with the OnBase for MEDITECH solution, we’re getting more out of our current system and meeting the federal government’s standards — and all for a third of the cost of upgrading MEDITECH.”
