EHR clear for McKenzie County HS

WATFORD CITY, N.D.: McKenzie County Healthcare Systems (MCHS) announced that McKenzie County Memorial Hospital is the first hospital in North Dakota to qualify for Medicare reimbursements for using a certified electronic health record (EHR).

McKenzie County Healthcare Systems will receive the reimbursement from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services EHR Incentive Program. The program was created by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act to offer healthcare providers financial incentives for implementing and demonstrating meaningful use of an EHR system.

EHR adoption incentives from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are offered to physicians, providers, and hospitals until 2015, after which the federal government may levy penalties for failing to adopt electronic health records. Hospitals can qualify for $2 million or more through the program, depending on the costs involved in implementing an EHR solution and upon demonstrating meaningful use of the system. REACH is a regional extension center created to help clinicians in Minnesota and North Dakota become meaningful users of EHR systems as defined by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

As per the release, McKenzie County Memorial Hospital is claimed to the first hospital in North Dakota to successfully attest to meaningful use, meeting the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services requirements for successfully using an EHR to improve patient care. To date only one other hospital in North Dakota has attested to meaningful use.

“We are thrilled to be the first hospital in the state to reach this major milestone in a nationwide effort to modernize healthcare information technology, make the system more efficient and control healthcare costs,” said Dan Kelly, CEO of McKenzie County Healthcare Systems. “It’s a real testament to the quality of the staff that we have at the hospital as well as the Healthland EHR solution that we put in place. We’re looking forward to the benefits that the system will bring, like having a single patient chart throughout our system so staffs at the hospital, clinic, nursing home, and assisted living facility are all working from the same record with the same patient information. That’s really important for assuring quality patient care in a multi-facility healthcare system like ours.”