Health Disparities to be Tackled in Meaningful Use Stage 3

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While EHR companies are working to meet Meaningful Use (MU) Stage 2 criteria, industry leaders have been collaborating to develop MU Stage 3 requirements.  Last week, the Consumer Partnership for eHealth published an action plan, Leveraging Meaningful Use to Reduce Health Disparities Plan, to leverage MU Stage 3 requirements to reduce health disparities.

According to Healthcare IT News, the proposed action plan:

1. Recommends that EHRs have the ability to stratify patients’ specific conditions by variables such as race, ethnicity, language, gender identity, sexual orientation, socio-economic status and disability status.
2. Calls for greater use of patient data collected and shared through devices such as smartphones.
3. Emphasizes the need to ensure that electronic health information is effectively communicated to patients, so they are better able to utilize its benefits.

The goal is to address health disparities as part of Stage 3 requirements resulting in improved health outcomes and measurement nationwide.  Notable statistics surrounding disparities highlighted in the action plan include:

• 58 million people ages five and older speak a language other than English at home
• 56 million people live with a disability
• Women account for 50.8 percent of the population
• The U.S. Hispanic population reached 50.5 million, increasing 43 percent from the year 2000 and accounting for over half of the total population increase in the U.S.