Our clinic is worried about qualifying for this year’s Meaningful Use incentive payments. We have this hastily purchased EMR that was supposed to make life easier and quality better for all of us. The EMR vendor got paid a long time ago but we are still dealing with the administrative burdens imposed by our new system.
By attesting that we can use this thing reasonably properly, we can receive some Government incentive monies, which even under the best of circumstances don’t even begin to make up for all the extra expenses and productivity losses we have incurred through going digital.
What we are up against is a product that doesn’t do, or doesn’t easily do, what we were told it could. And the vendor isn’t working real hard to help us achieve Meaningful Use.
I know how things could get better:
Every quarter, impose a rebate of 25% of each EMR purchase price, paid by the vendor to each practice that isn’t able to use their product as promised. That would place the problem where it belongs, instead of with the hapless consumer. I think that would speed up product improvement and tech support a whole lot.
Compare today’s struggle to achieve Meaningful Use with what happened with faulty General Motors ignition switches, exploding Takata airbags and polluting Volkswagen diesels. Nobody blamed the consumer for such problems.
Why, then, are medical providers held responsible for having bought, under pressure, less than functional electronic medical records?
Make the EMR vendors attest instead of us!
A Country Doctor Writes: 
From your lips to God’s ears!
yeah, and they don’t even talk to each other. I do not understand how the government can force people to buy a communication device that doesn’t communicate–
I’m sorry that you are facing this absurd challenge
Though, the medical profession is a calling, i truly sympathize with your situation.
Have you considered changing EMR vendors? We went through three before we found one that would work with us to get the records the way WE wanted them.