Data on Meaningful Use Attestation

Thanks @john_chilmark, it will be really interesting as we get updated data and can analyze trends and I also hope to see dollar amounts added.

Also potentially insightful would be seeing vendor performance normalized by national user volume to understand the percentage of their userbase represented by the attestations (i.e. what percentage of allscript's users are represented by the 1500 attestations)

Umm, you can't just look at the raw data. You have to actually analyze it. Epic's 6K attestations in a void don't mean anything. Cerner has fewer attestations – because they're all hospitals with only a handful of EPs. Just like Meditech. Epic has a good mix of both. Most important stat might be attestation rate as a % of total EMR customers, where Athena seems to be the best.

Brian,Notice thst there are duplicate provider IDs in the ID column of the raw data. This is because it's not uncommon for providers (especially hospitals) to be using more than one vendor. Some are using complete EHR vendors with modular EHR vendors; others are using multiple versions of the same complete EHR, which shows up as multiple vendor instances in the raw data. Point is you can't simply add the rows to get to the actual number of hospital attestations completed. You will need to collapse the duplicate id rows to get to that number. On the vendor number question, you'll want to ask whether instances of Epic Spring 2008 and Summer 2009 running in the same hospital really equal 2 Epic installations. I would consider that 1 instance. I think your numbers are close, but for the above reasons not 100% accurate.Louis Wenzlow

I've worked with some of the hospitals in my region that have attested. I can pinpoint some of them from this data. In those cases where the hospitals submitted a certified EHR id # with multiple associated vendors, the data file shows multiple rows with duplicate ids for each vendor instance (usually a complete EHR vendor and one or more modular vendors). I therefore believe that each id # is associated with a specific EP or hospital, and a duplicate indicates that the provider selected multiple vendors or versions in the ONC CHPL when they generated their EHR id #. If you sort by id for hospitals, you will begin to see a pattern of complete EHR vendors and their partner vendors or other vendors that hospitals often interface into that specific HIS environment. I'm not sure what's going on in those cases where multiple versions of the same vendor are listed. Perhaps in the case you site, the provider wasn't sure which one to pick so he picked both to be safe. With the Epic Spring 2008 and Summer 2009, is it possible that not all of the Epic modules were updated at the same time, so the hospital was running at least one module with the older version? I don't know Epic well enough to know if this is possible. Louis

I think it's great to see the number of attestations, but wouldn't it make more sense to show the percent of providers by vendor to show which vendors are really the most efficient and helpful? I'm surprised a NextGen has about the same as an eMDs and less than athenahealth when we know their marketshare is much higher!