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Don’t
Miss First Meaningful Use Requirement Deadline
Physicians and healthcare providers need to scramble to adhere to the government’s
plan to ensure electronic medical records (EMR) are implemented within a few
short years. Adoption incentives will be activated in January 2011 and penalties
for noncompliance begin in 2015. One of the major obstacles healthcare providers
have encountered is what constitutes “meaningful use” of a certified
EMR in order to be eligible for incentive bonuses. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid
Services (CMS) proposed Stage 1 criteria for meaningful use focus on electronically
capturing health information in a coded format, using that information to track
key clinical conditions, communicating that information for care coordination
purposes, and initiating the reporting of clinical quality measures and public
health information.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information
Technology (ONC) is working on finalizing the definition of “meaningful
use” and
the criteria will be completed sometime this spring. To accomplish this, ONC
recommended specific objectives for physicians to meet as they begin using
EMRs. Criteria for the 2011 deadline include:
• Developing capabilities to exchange health information where possible
• Providing patients with timely electronic access to their health information,
including lab results, problem list, medication lists, allergies
• Generating and transmitting permissible prescriptions electronically
• Providing patients with electronic copies of discharge instructions
and procedures
• Implementing clinical decision support rules relevant to specialty or
clinical priority s
• Submitting insurance claims electronically and verifying insurance eligibility
electronically when possible
ONC also called for enabling patient access to
personal health records by 2013 and will require that all providers participate
in a national health data exchange by 2015. Many healthcare organizations have
hesitated to make purchasing decisions about EMR systems until they understood
more clearly what CMS would need from them. Since implementing an EMR system
is a timely process including training and uploading existing data, finalizing
EMR plans should be a major goal for all medical providers in the next few
months.
For more information
sign up for the ARRA Advisor, a free biweekly
e-newsletter that provides the latest information from the MMS about the Federal
Stimulus program, EMR adoption, Health Information Exchange quality measures
and other related technology subjects.
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