Saturday, July 19, 2014

Incentives For Meaningful Use Certified Ehr Initiative

By Coleen Torres


Coordinators of health information technology are providing incentives to hospitals and other health facilities to enhance their capacity to utilize this technology. They have set a criterion and regulations that must be met in order to benefit from meaningful use certified ehr program. This is monitored by officials at national level with the aim of achieving maximum efficiency.

Certification programs are either permanent or temporary. The temporary programs are aimed at testing capacity and ensuring that a facility is fully compliant and capable before the permanent status is awarded. The temporary certification demands proof that the technology existed before the date you are filling claims against. There must be verifiable evidence to support that.

The introduction of a permanent program aims at gradually phasing out the temporary and offering a single window for compliance. It offered a window period during which interested parties could meet the targets set. There are ongoing updates on regulations since the program is still under development. This is communicated in accessible manner by responsible authorities.

The national authority has released tools, tests, requirements and cases to be used when evaluating conformity. These rules are developed by the national institute responsible for technology and standardization. They inform an individual or institution of the level of conformity to required standards.

The technology must be meaningfully utilized to qualify a health facility or individual to receive the benefits offered under the initiative. The threshold set by standardization institute must be met. The details include information sharing about patients and offering a care summary record whenever it is needed.

The criterion varies depending on whether it is an individual or hospital under review. Hospitals and professionals also have different requirements depending on the area they specialize. It is the responsibility of institutions to facilitate their personnel to meet individual requirements depending on interest.

There are several stages towards meeting ehr requirements. Each of these stages demands unique participation and engagement. It takes 90 days of year one and a full second year to have the first stage completed. Any candidate must complete the first stage successfully before proceeding to the next.

The second phase takes two full years to allow authorities to check compliance and capacity for permanent certification. Individuals are vetted following the calendar year while hospitals follow the federal fiscal calendar. It is possible to find a certified individual working in an institution that is yet to be certified. The requirements for each entity are different.

Objectives set for professionals tally to 17 core ones while hospitals, health facilities and critical access hospitals have to meet 16 core objectives. There are three additional objectives for professionals to meet, bringing their total tally to twenty. Hospitals have a total tally of nineteen since they have to select three more to add to their sixteen.

All payments regarding ehr certification have to undergo federal reductions. These reductions are referred to as sequentration and currently stand at 2 percent. This is the same percentage used under medicare. April 2013 was the closing date for reporting using these percentages. Detailed regulations are available from the website of the authority.




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