At this time, you are probably evaluating the benefits of the EHR Meaningful Use Incentive Payment Program. To receive the maximum incentives for participation, you will need to make a decision soon about your enrollment. That is because you only have four months to prepare to begin your attestation period. The attestation period is a 90-day reporting period during which you must demonstrate your ability to meaningfully use your electronic health records system (EHR).
Who is eligible to enroll?
In Part One of our series on EHR Meaningful Use, we talked about the incentives you could receive from the CMS Medicare/Medicaid EHR Incentive Payment Program. Before you begin preparing for attestation, you will want to determine whether you are even eligible to attest through either Medicare or Medicaid - and you must choose only one. We encourage you to review our Incentives Eligibility Guide, visit this online eligibility calculator, and review the PurdueREC's Preparation Guide before beginning the registration process.
Are you ready to attest?
Once you decide which plan you want to take toward EHR Meaningful Use, you need to choose the objectives for which you will be evaluated. These objectives include fifteen (15) core items along with five (5) additional menu items. Most objectives and measures are based on percentages. Providers may wish to test their ability to meet these objectives before the attestation period begins by undergoing a readiness assessment. This assessment allows providers to identify opportunities for approving their metrics to meet ONC thresholds. Together, the PurdueREC and the physician then decide upon a plan to remediate problem areas prior to attestation.
Note that you can be excluded from certain measures that may not have any relevance to the scope of your practice. Certain objectives, however, are non-negotiable, such as demonstrating how well you protect patient health information (Core Measure 15). In part three of this EHR Meaningful Use series, we will discuss security risk assessment at greater length.
You must complete your attestation period by the end of the year to achieve your maximum incentives. If you need additional guidance, contact Caren Crum, Purdue Regional Extension Center Account Manager, at (765) 494-9204 or carencrum@purdue.edu. The PurdueREC offers specialists EHR Meaningful Use guidance, attestation validation/support, and security risk assessments.
Purdue University has spent the past year helping more than 2,400 Indiana primary care physicians and more than 30 hospitals as they seek to comply with the "Meaningful Use" standards associated with electronic health records systems (EHRs).
