Wednesday, October 5, 2011

CRHC’s First Rural Clinic Reaches Meaningful Use and Attests to Medicare for Incentive Funding

The Colorado Rural Health Center (CRHC) started working with MidValley Family Practice as their Regional Extension Center (REC) partner in June 2011. At that point, Dr. Glenn Kotz and his practice manager, Joyce, were well on their way to reaching Meaningful Use (MU) and they began their 90-day reporting period on June 26th. During their 90-day reporting period, CRHC assisted in performing four Meaningful Use Gap Analyses which assessed the measures the practice was meeting and which measures still needed adjustments, including changing current workflows to accommodate the collecting the new measures. In addition, MidValley performed a data exchange test with a pediatric practice in Boulder also using Centricity’s software.

The practice initially struggled with delivering the mandatory clinical summaries to patients after each visit which are both time consuming and require printing off mass amounts of paper. However, they were able to find a temporary solution which will be fixed once a patient portal is implemented and patients can access their summary electronically after their visit.

MidValley Family Practice successfully attested with Medicare on September 26th and takes great pride in the fact that they are the first to attest to MU as a CRHC REC partner. CRHC is delighted to have had the privilege to work with MidValley Family Practice and help them achieve MU which shows their commitment to providing excellent patient care. Congratulations MidValley Family Practice!