Paper 1, Due end of Week 4

3HS executives wants to upgrade their home grown EHR to a commercial, off the shelf (COTS) system that is meaningful use (MU) certified. As the chief procurement officer for the system, the vice president for support services has been designated as the lead for this project. Shew has asked you for guidance in understanding MU and its implications.   Provide a white paper to aid in decision making.

In informal conversation, the support services vice president has indicated she wishes to better understand Meaningful Use Certified EHR Technology, the applicable statutes and regulations and why they were enacted, and the benefits of a MU Certified EHR Technology system, including incentives and penalties if the current system was to remain in place. The decision will also be heavily influenced by factors such as average costs and average time to make such an upgrade, so examples from other health systems such as Kaiser Permanente, DoD, or VA would be valuable. Be sure to furnish evidence to support any statements and quantify evidence with numeric figures, not generalities like enormous, huge, many, most, increased, decreased, high costs, or lower costs.

This white paper should be in APA format and be no more than 5 pages excluding the cover page, table of contents, abstract, appendices, and references.  Stats! and Supporting evidence is extremely important!