John requested that the next series of Meaningful Use Monday posts explore the ins and outs of the individual meaningful use measures. To begin this process, today’s post reviews the basic requirements and the type of information that providers will report. Next Monday’s post will address the options available to some providers to exclude certain measures. Following that, I will address the measures, one by one, week by week (…although I can’t promise that I won’t digress as subjects of timely interest arise!)
By now, most people interested in meaningful use know that there are 25 measures and that they are divided into two sets—Core and Menu. Providers must meet all 15 of the core measures and any 5 of the 10 menu set measures, as long as one public health measure is included. (Another way to look at the menu set is that providers can defer—presumably to Stage 2—5 of the 10 menu measures.)
How each of the 25 measures is reported varies in a number of ways, so it is important to carefully read the requirements:
- For some measures, providers will be asked to simply attest that “Yes”, they met the measure—e.g., implemented a particular EHR functionality or performed a test of a specific capability.
- Other measures have thresholds that must be met, and therefore require the reporting of numerators and denominators, using data generated by the EHR.
- Denominators vary, e.g., some are based on all patients seen, while others refer to a particular subset of patients.
Lynn Scheps is Vice President, Government Affairs at EHR vendor SRSsoft. In this role, Lynn has been a Voice of Physicians and SRSsoft users in Washington during the formulation of the meaningful use criteria. Lynn is currently working to assist SRSsoft users interested in showing meaningful use and receiving the EHR incentive money. Check out Lynn’s previous Meaningful Use Monday posts.
“Denominators vary, e.g., some are based on all patients seen, while others refer to a particular subset of patients.”
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And, a subsidiary interpretive question remains (e.g., pp 66-69 of the MU Final Rule): when you do your year one 90 day attestion period, are you required to process ALL patient visits during the period through your certified EHR, or is your starting baseline denominator simply those patients you have chosen to input (while tracking others outside the system — even on paper)? Some critics view the latter as an opportunity to “cherry-pick” in order to hit your percentage targets.
Let the games begin.
Love it! Really looking forward to your input on each of the measures.
Is the physician penalized for the many patients who come to the office without sufficient active problems to allow for the listing of the non core PQRI’s. Not everyone has diabetes or heart disease or asthma, etc.