The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid has announced that six more states, including California have joined the Medicaid EHR incentive program for eligible providers that utilize an ONC Certified EMR System. 



This now gives providers the choice to choose between either the Medicare or Medicaid EHR incentive programs. The DHCS website has more information on the Medicaid incentive program. 



Medicare Incentive Paid Over 5 Years: $44,000 Medicaid Incentive Paid Over...

Today October 3rd, 2011 marks the last day for this calendar year 2011 to start your 90 day reporting period to meet Meaningful Use for stage one. Meeting stage one is the first step in Meaningful Use and receiving the incentive monies.

 Does your office have a plan in place for meeting Meaningful Use? 

I recommend that every practice sits down and creates a timeline and checklist for implementing and meeting Meaningful Use, whether you plan on attesting for 2011 or if you plan on attesting in 2012.  

Below is a sample timeline and checklist for meeting Meaningful Use, every practice will vary in time and needs. 

Moving on in our Meaningful Use Breakdown series we will take a closer look at the core measure two, Drug Interaction Checks. This core measure checks to see that the EP (Eligible Professionals) are using EMR technology in regards to checking medications that they are prescribing to patients for possible drug-drug and drug-allergy interactions. Attesting for this measure is a yes or no.  Yes = Drug-drug and drug-allergy interaction checks were turned on during the full 90 day reporting period.  No = Drug-drug and drug-allergy interaction checks were NOT turned on for the full 90 day reporting period. Within the EMR these alerts should automatically appear when an interaction is found. This feature is already included within the Practice Expert EMR. ...

Kicking off our Meaningful Use Breakdown series we will be deconstructing the first core measure, CPOE (Computer Provider Order Entry). The first measure is a the set of 15 core required measures for Eligible Professionals (EP) to show that they are meeting Meaningful Use. 

The CPOE measure checks to see that all unique patients (any patient seen more than once during the 90 day reporting period is to be counted only once in the denominator), more than 30% of those unique patients seen have at least one medication that was ordered using CPOE.   Using a CPOE in an EMR is most commonly used with the eRx module. The Practice Expert EMR has this ability using the eRx module...

We are starting a series in which we will go over the 15 Core Measures and 10 Menu Set Measures that are required to attest for Meaningful Use for the year 2011. Our goal is to help you the eligible professionals better understand and meet Meaningful Use.  Starting on September 5, 2011 we will review the first core measure COPE for Medication Orders and the requirements needed to attest for this measure. There after we will just start going down the list and reviewing each core and menu set measure in detail.  If you have questions that you would like to be addressed leave us a comment and the best way to reach you, either by email or as reply on this blog. ...