47 Providers with Rhode Island’s Coastal Medical Receive Medicare Incentives for Meaningful Use
Practice Using eClinicalWorks Improves Quality of Care, Receives $846,000 in Incentives
WESTBOROUGH, Mass.—October 23, 2011—eClinicalWorks®, a market leader in ambulatory clinical systems, today announced that 47 providers from Rhode Island’s Coastal Medical have successfully attested for meaningful use and each have received an $18,000 check from the Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the maximum amount allowed for 2011. These incentives were established by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) to reward medical providers who successfully demonstrate meaningful use of an electronic health records (EHR) system in ways that improve the quality, safety and effectiveness of patient-centered care.
“eClinicalWorks has been an essential element of our successful Patient-centered Medical Home practice transformation efforts at Coastal Medical,” said G. Alan Kurose, MD, President of Coastal Medical. “The functionalities of eClinicalWorks have enabled many important changes in practice workflow, and have helped us to deliver on the promise of fully coordinated care that is truly patient-centered. The selection of eClinicalWorks as the EHR of choice for all Coastal practices has helped us to recruit resident physicians, and has made Coastal more attractive to small practices looking to join a larger organization with enhanced infrastructure and a fully integrated MU-certified EHR. Efforts to achieve interoperability with Rhode Island’s two Health Information Exchanges are well underway at Coastal, and the choice of eClinicalWorks has proven to be a wise one in this context as well. Our successful use of eClinicalWorks at Coastal has also helped us to garner significant federal incentive payments through the Beacon Communities, Regional Extension Center, and Meaningful Use programs.”
“Achieving Meaningful Use is a major milestone for every single Coastal employee,” said Meryl Moss, MPA, COO of Coastal Medical. “It recognizes the enormous effort that our physicians and staff have made to use the electronic health record in a robust manner. We can see a real difference in our ability to care for our patients and are thankful to eClinicalWorks for providing us with the tools that have enabled us to improve the quality of the care we provide.”
Helping its customers through the attestation process, eClinicalWorks provides eClinicalWorks Meaningful Use, Adoption, and Quality (MAQ) Dashboards free of charge. To further meaningful use education, eClinicalWorks is conducting a series of RoadShows across the nation for medical providers, clinical staff and office administrators with 37 already occurring and approximately 10 more planned in 2011. These are free interactive session on all 25 requirements of meaningful use and are now accredited by the American Medical Association for Continuing Medical Education credits. There are also daily free webinars educating customers on this topic. With the MAQ Dashboards, RoadShows, webinars, newsletters, Meaningful Use Assessment and others, eClinicalWorks has developed tools and educational resources to aid providers in becoming meaningful users.
“eClinicalWorks prides itself in demonstrating market leadership that enables practices to pursue quality of care initiatives, including meaningful use,” said Girish Kumar Navani, CEO and co-founder of eClinicalWorks. “Since this initiative was announced, we have been diligent in ensuring that our customers have the tools and education on the guidelines to meet meaningful use. eClinicalWorks is excited for Coastal Medical and all of our clients who have successfully attested.”
On July 13, 2010, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department released the final rule on meaningful use of an EHR under the HITECH Act. Signed into law by President Obama on February 17, 2009, the HITECH Act authorizes CMS to provide a reimbursement incentive for physician and hospital providers who demonstrate the meaningful use of an EHR.
About Coastal Medical
Coastal Medical is a medical service organization, and one of the state’s largest group practices, consisting of 101 providers with 20 offices across Rhode Island. Coastal provides predominantly primary care, along with some specialty services, to 105,000 patients. Coastal also offers practice management solutions to physician practices and hospital systems across the country. www.coastaldocs.com
About eClinicalWorks
eClinicalWorks® is a privately held leader in the ambulatory clinical systems market. The company’s unified electronic health records (EHR) solutions are proven for every market segment: large practice groups, including Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative (MAeHC) and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, as well as medium, small and solo practices regardless of specialty. The company enjoys high profitability with a five-year compounded growth rate of more than 100 percent year-to-year. With an established customer base of more than 180,000 providers and 370,000 healthcare professionals across all 50 states, eClinicalWorks has been awarded multiple top industry honors including being named to the Inc. 5000 for the past five consecutive years. Based in Westborough, Mass., eClinicalWorks has additional offices in New York City, Pleasanton, Calif. and Alpharetta, Ga. More information on eClinicalWorks can be found at www.eclinicalworks.com or by calling 866-888-6929.
