MOSES LAKE - Samaritan Healthcare and Othello Community Hospital are among the first hospitals in the state to complete the first stage of a Medicare incentive program.

The hospitals received notice that they would receive payment through the Medicare Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program for meeting Meaningful Use Stage 1 criteria, which is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

"Meaningful use" means "providers need to show they're using certified EHR technology in ways that can be measured significantly in quality and in quantity," according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services website.

Inland Northwest Health Services (INHS) is a health care information technology vendor that hosts and manages 38 hospitals, including Samaritan Healthcare and Othello Community Hospital. Twelve of their hospitals have reached the first stage of the incentive program.

The implementation of health information technology reduces errors and allows for alerts for concerns like allergies or drug interactions, said Cheyenne Thomas, regional accounts manager for INHS.

"When this first came out, it occurred to us that ... one of the best services I could provide our regional facilities would be to really learn about meaningful use and to understand it and ... then to help them develop a plan to move toward meeting all of this criteria so that they could receive the incentives," said Thomas. "And also so they could follow the pathway to better care and cost reduction which is inherently part of this program."

Eventually, hospitals will be penalized for not meeting the criteria, she said.

"In my opinion, it's fairly important to help hospitals meet this while there's still some incentive money to help them get there, because it's going to be required."

INHS has proved invaluable to Samaritan Healthcare by providing clinical information analysts to help implement the software systems that help them meet the meaningful use criteria, said Chief Financial Officer Thomas Legel. They also provide training and ongoing support, he said.

The incentive for hospitals and physicians to achieve meaningful use status is an advantage to patients because it provides more timely, effective and cost effective patient care by requiring caregivers, providers, hospitals and doctors to electronically enter information such as care plans and drug orders by computer, said Legel.

"It will be more accurate and the patients should actually start receiving the treatment and the care they need and should actually recover much quicker," he said. "I think, in the long run, they'll have shorter stays in the hospitals, more effective treatments and healthier outcomes for the patients."

Othello Community Hospital couldn't have met the meaningful use benchmarks if not for INHS, said administrator Harry Geller.

"We don't have the staff to do that here," he said. "That's one of the benefits we get being affiliated with INHS. They have all these staff and analysts available and we really don't have an IT department per se. They run the entire department for us. They're the knowledge and expertise."