Electronic Health Records – Ensuring Great Incentives For Experienced Physicians
In the beginning of 2010, the Interim Final Rule (IFR) on Health Information Technology was published, bringing more clarity to “Meaningful Use” for Electronic Health Records (EHR). The final rule will be published shortly and few changes are expected. This article aims to provide a simple description of the changes required in your practice to become a meaningful user and obtain incentive payments of up to $44,000 per physician.
The IFR states that your practice must implement a certified Electronic Health Record System In order to qualify for the incentives. Further, it is a necessity for each physician to get registered as an Eligible Professional (EP) with the Health and Human Services Department. The eligible EHRs including Ggastro, Gcardio and Guro will get certifications in 2010 itself, and the registration process will also be published. After registration, the physician must report on 25 measures continuously in any 90 day period either in 2011 or 2012 so as to qualify for the incentives of $18,000, in the first year. For full payments, the specialist must report for a full year.
The EHR certification will be helpful in reporting on all the 25 measures, but for that, it is essential that you each patient that the physicians see is documented with all the desired information to comply with the minimum necessities. Gmed will provide a Meaningful Use Advisor to help the physician’s practice understand compliance at the provider and patient level. Below is simplified interpretation of some of those measures for each provider.
80% of medical orders must be issued using Ggastro, Gcardio or Guro. 75% of non‐controlled medications are prescribed electronically using Gmed’s e‐Prescription module (SureScripts). 80% of patients must include preferred language, insurance type, gender, race, ethnicity and date of birth as part of their demographic information. It will configure Gpm to make these fields required. If you are not using Gpm, we recommend you use the Meaningful Use Advisor prior to you electronic submission.
50% of laboratory orders have associated electronic results. This requirement carries some risk because few laboratories are capable of sending electronic results using the new standards. Please contact your laboratory to discuss their plan to install a laboratory interface 90 days prior to the start of your reporting period or sooner. If in doubt, consider switching to a national provider like LabCorp(tm) or Quest(tm) with proven expertise to minimize your risk.Send reminders to 50% of patients aged 50 years or older for preventive or follow up care (ire. screening colonoscopy). 80% of insurance claims are submitted electronically. If you are using Gpm we will monitor compliance for you.
80% of patients have an reconciled medication list. The site recommends that you reconcile the current medication list every time the patient attends your practice or requests a drug refill by selecting “import medications” from the e‐Prescriptions module. Demonstrate the practice’s ability to submit electronic syndromic surveillance data to public health agencies. No action is required since Gmed will test this feature for you during implementation.
There are an array of other measures apart from these. It is however a bit difficult to include all of them in this small space. This guide will indeed act as an effective tool for the physicians to carry on with their practice in the right direction. It is always nice to have fruitful incentives alongside getting the regular payments.
Learn more about Health Information Technology . Stop by www.gmed.com site where you can find out all about Electronic Health Records and what it can do for you.