Skip to site content

Meaningful Use

EHR for Meaningful Use

ARRA provides incentive payments to eligible professionals (EP), eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals (CAH) participating in Medicare and Medicaid programs that adopt and successfully demonstrate meaningful use of certified EHR technology. This course attempts to describe and explain the initial criteria that EPs, eligible hospitals, and CAHs must meet in order to qualify for an incentive payment.

At the end of this session, participants will be able to:

  • Use Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) for medication orders directly entered by any licensed healthcare professional authorized to enter orders into the medical record per state, local, and professional guidelines.
  • Implement drug-drug and drug-allergy checks
  • Generate and transmit permissible prescriptions electronically
  • Record patient demographics; preferred language, gender, race, ethnicity, date of birth
  • Maintain an up-to-date problem list of current and active diagnoses
  • Maintain an active medication list
  • Maintain an active medication allergy list
  • Record and chart changes in the following vital signs: Height, weight, and blood pressure and calculate and display body mass index (BMI) for ages 2 and older, plot and display growth charts for children 2-20 years, including BMI
  • Record smoking status for patients 13 years or older
  • Implement one clinical decision support rule relevant to specialty or high clinical priority along with the ability to track compliance with that rule
  • Report [on six] ambulatory clinical quality measures to CMS (or for EPs seeking the Medicaid incentive payment, to the States)
  • Provide clinical summaries for patients for each office visit
  • Electronically exchange key clinical information (for example, problem list, medication list, medication allergies, diagnostic test results), among providers of care and patients authorized entities electronically
  • Protect electronic health information created or maintained by the certified EHR technology through the implementation of appropriate technical capabilities.
  • Conduct or review a security risk analysis per 45 CFR 164.308 (a)(1) of the certified EHR technology, and implement security updates and correct identified security deficiencies as part of its risk management process
  • Incorporate clinical lab-test results into certified EHR technology as structured data
  • Generate lists of patients by specific conditions to use for quality improvement, reduction of disparities, research, or outreach
  • Provide patients with timely electronic access to their health information (including lab results, problem list, medication lists, medication allergies) within four business days of the information being available to the EP
  • Use certified EHR technology to identify patient-specific education resources and provide those resources to the patient if appropriate
  • Perform medication reconciliation
  • Provide a summary of care record
  • Capability to submit electronic data to immunization registries or Immunization Information Systems and actual submission in accordance with applicable law and practice
  • Capability to submit electronic syndromic surveillance data to public health agencies and actual submission in accordance with applicable law and practice