About Meaningful Use
Meaningful Use is way more than using the latest technology or the best software package in your practice, hospital or clinic. And it’s much more than reporting information at the federal level. It’s about how electronic communications can streamline your workflow so you can make more informed clinical decisions and improve the care of your patients. Any doctor or clinician will tell you that although implementing electronic health records in a practice can create hurdles to overcome, they’d never go back to paper records, ever. Hospital staff will tell you the same.
Meaningful Use Stage 1 requires physicians and hospitals to report about certain clinical measures and exchange information among themselves to better coordinate care for patients. In turn, they receive Medicare and Medicaid financial incentives for meeting these requirements. Imagine how you can use this data and patient information to improve health outcomes, ensure patient safety and involve people in their own health care. Ultimately, this electronic exchange of information among health professionals will transform health care in our country.
Meaningful Use Stage 2 expands on the clinical measures and focuses on ensuring that providers exchange information outside of their own organizational or practice walls. The rule allows multiple doctors in a practice to attest as a group, reinforces the 90-day reporting period, asks physicians to provide records electronically to at least 5 percent of patients, and most importantly, Stage 2 begins in 2014 instead of 2013.
What is Meaningful Use (MU)?
How will MU criteria be implemented?
Who is eligible for Meaningful Use payments?
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What is Meaningful Use?
It’s a term that essentially says that physicians, healthcare providers and hospital personnel need to use electronic health records in a “meaningful” way. Under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, eligible healthcare professionals and hospitals can receive Medicare and Medicaid financial incentives if they meet certain requirements.
For instance, physicians need to meet 15 core objectives and five additional ones, such as drug interaction alerts, reporting patient demographics, keeping up-to-date problem lists, using computerized physician order entry, ePrescribing and tracking other clinical data measures. All of this leads to using technology in a way that is “meaningful” for both you and your patients.
How will Meaningful Use criteria be implemented?
Stage 1 "Meaningful Use" criteria, beginning in 2011, are focused on the electronic capture of medical information in a fully-coded format and the use of that information to track clinical conditions to assist with care coordination.
Stage 1 also proposes the use of clinical decision support applications to facilitate disease and medication management and requires the reporting of clinical quality metrics and public health information. For 2011, CMS has outlined 25 specific Meaningful Use objectives and associated performance measures for eligible physicians. In 2012, CMS will also require the direct electronic submission of clinical quality measures to CMS via certified EHR technology.
Stage 2 criteria is based upon the findings of Stage 1 and leverages the broader use of the EHR technology implemented during 2011 and 2012. Stage 2 brings greater emphasis on disease management, clinical decision support, medication management, patient access to personal health information, transitions of care, and bidirectional communication between physicians and public health agencies.
Stage 3 will be centered on improvements in quality, safety and efficiency; will require clinical decision support for conditions of high-priority to the general public health; and will provide patient access to health self-management tools.
Who is eligible for Medicare?
- Medical Doctors
- Doctors of Osteopathy
- Dentists
- Dental Surgeons
- Podiatrists
- Optometrists
- Chiropractors
Who is eligible for Medicaid?
- Physicians
- Pediatricians
- Physician Assistants*
- Nurse Practitioners*
- Nurse Midwives*
- Dentists
*Must have prescriptive authority
What is the Medicare MU incentive payment schedule for eligible professionals?
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What is the Medicaid MU incentive payment schedule for eligible professionals?
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