US Oncology scoops up N.C. rad onc center
WROS, in Cary, N.C., is a free-standing, full-service outpatient radiation therapy center. Adding WROS's services to Cancer Centers of North Carolina expands CCNC's radiation oncology services and provides increased resources and integrated care to patients, the companies indicated.
. I am neck deep in meaningful use and one of the major issues that I am facing does not seem to be getting any attention…in the media or by official organizations.
The ONC, with help from the National Quality Forum and others, published extensive documentation on how MU Measures and Clinical Quality Measures should be calculated. However, each of the software vendors have their own take on how this should be done and are implementing these calculations in a variety of ways. In the case of the vendor that I work with most of the time, they have done some very strange things. Sometimes they say they have been directed by the ONC to do something a certain way, with no documentation to support that position. Other times they just say that is how they have chosen to interpret the regs. This wildcat attitude would seem to bring the actual usefulness of all this data into question. How do you use the measures to judge the effectiveness of healthcare if there is no agreement on how the information is produced?
I have spoken with the State here in Washington and the local Region Extension Center (WIREC). Neither have the ability to review vendor accuracy. They also have heard nothing from the ONC about plans to hold vendors to any sort of accuracy requirement.
This has the real smell of “garbage in, garbage out”.