Follow up Meaningful Use Stage 3 is coming

Yesterday, I posted "Meaningful Use Stage 3 Is Coming: Should Be Fun" which discussed some onerous new rules that Stage 3 will impose including this one:

More than 25% of patients seen by an eligible professional (EP) or discharged from a hospital or emergency department (ED) must "actively engage" with their electronic health records (EHRs).

I said that in my experience most of the patients I took care of would have been unlikely to engage their EHRs and expressed concern that physicians would be penalized for their patients not reaching the 25% threshold.

A reader commented that the VA has had a patient portal called the Blue Button since 2010. He pointed out that in May of 2012, more than 500,000 unique patients had accessed their EMR. He meant this as a rebuttal to my opinion about the potential level of engagement.

However, it turns out that in 2012 over 6.3 million patients were treated by the VA system.  [See page 4 of this link.] If you divide 1 million by 6.3 million, you get 15.9%.

It seems like they have quite a way to go to get to 25%

I rest my case.

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