Cincinnati PR

Take a handful of working folks in any field – not just health care or IT, our subject du jour – and try to define “Meaningful Use.”

What’s the Meaning? How is it Used?

If you’re a physician or health care professional, you know all about “Meaningful Use,” and the $60,000 – at least that’s the current amount – that the U.S. Government will reimburse you for successfully implementing an Electronic Medical Record (EMR).

EMRs are the lifeblood at Cincinnati’s Path Forward IT, featured as the cover story in the September edition of Cincinnati MD News (www.MDNews.com).

Owned by Nick Recker, Path Forward IT capitalizes on the experience Recker earned during IT jobs he worked at Ohio University and Xavier University, where he earned his B.A. and Master’s Degrees, respectively.

Path Forward IT prides itself on independence, with its consultants trained on multiple EM formats.

The company (www.PathForwardIT.com) is not financially affiliated with any hardware/software vendor, allowing Path Forward IT to operate as a true consultant.

As a mediator between the private physician and the federal government’s march toward adoption of EMRs, Recker and his staff have become The Health Care IT Referee.

“Asking a physician to completely change the way they practice medicine, so that they can now accommodate an EMR into their lives and make no bones about it, this is a profound change in their professional lifestyle and can quickly lead to a challenging conversation,” Recker said.

Recker and his EMR guru, Jeff Lowrance, are preparing their colleagues and medical industry for the shock of a lifetime, courtesy of the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology.

“The physicians that we are talking to, they know it’s coming, but the timing has been accelerated,” Recker said.

“The challenge is to get the word out. The traditional physician is dealing with things they have never had to think about,” Recker added.

“The money is great. The Obama Administration has provided the means for physicians to invest in their own practices with some up-front money, which is really what the incentives are, but this will be a real challenge for physician practices.”

Recker said many physicians have never run a compliance report. Many physicians haven’t had to continually monitor every physician in their practice.

“We are here to help make that problem go away, by creating a virtual dashboard that will monitor compliance all year long, keep it in your face, and help  you address issues as a solution, not just another problem.”

The ONC is at the forefront of health IT efforts. It’s a resource to support the adoption of a national EMR. The ONC has employed a three-pronged approach to the EMR issue, a thorny debate for some; the national evolution of an overburdened, paper-dependant industry to others.

Both Recker and Lowrance have worked with computer-savvy physicians and their precursor generation.

They strive to help deliver a safety net that will provide and deliver positive health care outcomes emphasizing collaboration, training and the best tools/services that technology can provide.

Lowrance is the CIO/CEO of Ohio Shared Information Information Services – a non-profit Health Center Controlled Network representing more than 40 federally qualified Community Health Center locations.

The publisher’s contact for Cincinnati MD News is Kim Sherlock, who can be reached at (513) 478-1734 or ksherlock@mdnews.com. The Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky edition of MD News is delivered to more than 5,000 local physicians.

MD News is based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The trade journal was created to help medical doctors and health care executives discover new, amazing content from around the world and within their community.

Its tagline: “A national physician resource with local relevance exclusively about physicians, from physicians, for physicians.”

To reach Mr. Recker or Path Forward IT, please call (513) 924-5500, visit http://www.PathForwardIT.com or send an e-mail to contact@pathforwardit.com.

Docs: get the news you want from the source you trust, at Cincinnati MD News!