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Meaningful Use

What are Meaningful Use and the ARRA stimulus program?

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) has budgeted $19.2 billion to invest in healthcare IT. One of these intitiatives is the implementation of Electronic Health Records, or EHR (also referred to as EMR). The term "meaningful use" refers to a set of EHR/EMR performance criteria broken out across five stages over five years, that medical providers must meet in order to prove that they are using an EMR in their practice in a meaningful way. If providers meet all the criteria, they qualify to receive ARRA incentive funds. For Stage 1 (which runs through Dec. 31, 2012), eligible providers must meet 20 meaningful Use criteria (see below).

Are you eligible to receive incentive money?

Eligible Medicaid providers include:

1. A non-hospital based provider who see at least 30% of Medicaid insured patients
2. A non-hospital based pediatrician who see at least 20% of Medicaid insured patients
3. A provider who practices in FQHC with at least 30% needy patients

Stages

Meaningful Use adoption stages are measured over a five year period, with different requirements to incrementally increase use of your EMR each year. EMR for Medical Mastermind is HHS-Certified and will automatically alert and track meaningful use compliance with graphics and built-in visual aids. There is no need to add any additional software in order to fully meet Meaningful Use with our EMR. Here are the requirements for each Stage:

	Stage One:  Begin using and documenting (reporting) your EMR for a percentage of your visits (50%). This includes ePrescribing, diagnosis, notes, other clinical information. Share patient information and send quality and public health information reports.
	Stage Two:  In addition to stage 1 criteria, you will utilize your EMR to send and receive lab orders and results, and other information. The proposed stage 2 criteria are still awaiting public comment.
	Stage Three:  Continue fulfilling criteria from stages 1 and 2, and enroll your patients in a Personal Health Record system or Patient Portal. All Stage 3 criteria have not yet been defined in detail.

Meaningful Use Criteria

Meet all 15 required criteria:

Select 5 of 10 additional criteria:

Attestation

Once you have met all the criteria for Stage One, you will need to complete the Attestation provided by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (www.cms.gov) as proof your practice is eligible to receive stimulus reimbursement. The Attestation is comprised of a series of questions which must be satisfactorily answered in order to qualify.

For more details and to register for Meaningful Use, visit the EMR Incentive Program Site or the CMS web site.