Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Is it "required" to track the race of patients

Is it required for meaningful use requirements to monitor the race of patients, or is it optional?
My particular patient population is quite the ethnic stew, and I do not think monitoring my patient's race will help me improve the care that I give to my patients.
Any thoughts?

I believe it is useless, but my understanding is that meaningful use requires Race, Preferred Language, Barriers (vision, hearing) - all are under miscellaneous info in demographics. Unfortunately MEANINGFUL for the government and useless for me. I just started putting all in with each visit for the new year - I had my staff do all 4,000 race over the last year and then they added the other 2......

I agree many of the meaningful use items are just more regulation to distract us from our real job of establishing relationships and caring for patients. It is also my understanding that race is one of the requirements so as not to get off the subject started in this thread.

How many items or what specific items besides race are required to track in order to comply with meaningful use?
I wonder if it is any different for pediatric practices compared with adult care practices

Actually spyro, it not to distract you. At least, not on purpose. What is on purpose is to get doctors to collect and send to them the data that they want to collect but dont want to pay anyone to complile for them. So they find ways to make you guys do it. And then send you harrassing letters.

I swear we got a *##( letter asking us to send chart notes on patients to verify that we recorded a BMI. If there is one near useless measure , its BMI. For most cases, you can look and tell if someone is overweight or obese. They have a mirror and you have eyes.

There should also be an option where the patient "declines". Contrary to popular belief, there is a usefulness to knowing race and ethnicity from a clinical decision making standpoint. That doesn't mean, however, that your patient doesn't have the right to decline disclosure of their race.

I do think in very limited circumstances that it is important to know race and ethnicity, but making me record it on a certain percentage of patients to get paid is ridiculous, on the other hand I did it.

I still don't know how I can collect this. Is it okay just to look at them and guess? What if they are 8% African American and consider themselves such, although there skin is whiter than mine? I really don't think I can ask my overworked receptions to ask this. Patients already get mad when asked if other demographic info has change and are reluctant to have a picture at times. Perhaps just handing them a little card with a check box to give the doctor when he comes in. It looks like they have the option to refuse, but if they refuse do you lose credit for it?

I still don't know how I can collect this. Is it okay just to look at them and guess? What if they are 8% African American and consider themselves such, although there skin is whiter than mine? I really don't think I can ask my overworked receptions to ask this. Patients already get mad when asked if other demographic info has change and are reluctant to have a picture at times. Perhaps just handing them a little card with a check box to give the doctor when he comes in. It looks like they have the option to refuse, but if they refuse do you lose credit for it?

Boondoc, it's required information for MU.
the office of CMS is not going to ask you how you acquired the demographic data.
Either look at them and select the appropriate boxes, have your staff look at them and guess, or ask them. How you ask is up to you: your idea for giving out a little card is an excellent one. It could say "we are required by the federal gov't to ask what is your race, ethnicity, and preferred language. Place a check mark below:" Then list the options that are in AC.

They give the card back to the receptionist or to the MA or to you. You should not be entering this data, rather your staff. So any cards you collect are deposited for staff to input.

We have a 99% white population, the races include several native american, a few asian, and one african. It took my staff 2 days working intermittently between their other duties to go through all patients and input their race/demographic info on 2,400 patients. But now it's done.

If you are going to participate in MU this year, it's truly imperative to get this data on 50% of patients. Otherwise you won't qualify for the incentive payment.

My staff records this when they put in the demos. I remind them that we only need to record this information on 50% of the population. If you have to think about the answer for more than 2 seconds, just skip it.

It is a (minor) deficiency in AC that it does not allow you to record "patient refused to answer" as this is a permitted exclusion, per CMS.

Adam and Jon: Thanks, that is very helpful. Concerning doing all the patients in two days... is it required to do this on 50% of your panel when you attest, or do I need to reach 50% over the 90 day period for which I would attest?

(I really hate this question, as I did on the census, because it just empowers them for more social engineering and distributing tax money based on 'ethnic' areas in our country. Our poor will get less because they are 'white poor')

I Look at them and guess their race. I would suggest getting in the habit of pressing the "meaningful use" button before clicking signoff, so you can quickly review what meaningless data you are missing.

The demographic data being collected for MU reminds me of the way our state recently increased the amount of data being collected on death certificates. Some of the minutia and details on the new certificate can't easily be found, and leaving the areas blank isn't an option, so much of what is entered is junk. Which is then used by government to generate more junk. Which explains a lot of our national healthcare policy.

Boondoc, you are very welcome. I completely sympathize with your moral plight. I completely agree, but I'm playing the carrot and stick game at least for now.

In order to meet this measured goal, you must have 50% of the patients SEEN within the reporting period verified as to race, ethnicity, language preference. You DO NOT have to meet this measure on 50% of your entire patient population. The data AC is mining for MU is derived from patient contacts, not old visits. And the CMS requirement is only for those patients seen.

I hope this helps, and good luck buddy! I really hope you meet the goals and get the money (before they run out of it). I read today that CMS has paid out 2.6 BILLION, yes that's a B, to physicians and their employers in 2011 for MU incentives. There are over 176,000 eligible providers registered with CMS for MU to date.

Ken, I fully concur on your advice to get in the habit of clicking the blue MU button before signing the chart. I do this every single time. I see some random thing I forgot to do, take care of it, then sign the chart. It's take one second to do it, and it was ingenius of AC programmers to put that button there.

Jon, I agree: garbage in = garbage out