ARRA and your practice: What you need to know about stimulus funds.

The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) is the $800 billion economic and stimulus package that was introduced in Congress as H.R. 1, and signed into law in February 2009. The act contains several health information technology provisions with implications for physician practices, including amendments to the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and billions of dollars in incentive payments from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) earmarked for broader adoption and deployment of electronic health records. Click here to read our "Guide to Understanding the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act".

NueMD EHR Version 3.12 has achieved ONC-ACB certification from the Drummond Group^TM, which means that we meet the statutory requirements for vendors stipulated by the Office of the National Coordinator under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, and that our product meets the functional criteria that will entitle eligible providers to the stimulus funding.

Stage 1 Objectives for Meaningful Use

We are committed to meeting all Stage 1 objectives as finalized by the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) and CMS in July 2010 (see below). Eligible providers will be required to meet a total of 25 meaningful use objectives. The objectives are broken into two segments: Core and Menu.

Core Objectives:

Eligible providers must meet all 15 of the core requirements to qualify for the stimulus incentives.

• Use CPOE for at least 30 percent of orders
• Implement drug-drug, drug-allergy interaction checks
• Maintain an up-to-date problem list of current and active diagnoses
• Maintain active medication list
• Maintain active medication allergy list.
• Record demographics as structured data for 50 percent of patients
• Record and chart changes in vital signs for 50 percent of patients
• Record smoking status for 50 percent of patients aged 13 or older
• Provide patients with clinical summaries for each office visit
• Provide patients with an electronic copy of their health information on request
• Generate and transmit permissible prescriptions electronically
• Implement ability to electronically exchange key clinical information among providers and patient-authorized entities
• Implement one clinical decision support rule and ability to track compliance with the rule
• Implement systems to protect privacy and security of patient data in the EHR
• Report ambulatory quality measures to CMS or the States
  

Menu Objectives

Eligible providers may defer five of the Menu objectives. It is up to the provider to choose which objectives they would like to meet, so they can align their choices with their specialty. However, one of the choices must be a public health objective.

• Implement drug formulary checks
• Incorporate clinical laboratory results into EHR as structured data
• Generate lists of patients by specific conditions to use for quality improvement, reduction of disparities, research or outreach
• Use EHR technology to identify patient-specific education resources and provide those to the patient as appropriate
• Perform medication reconciliation between care settings
• Provide summary of care records for patients referred or transitioned to another provider or setting
• Submit electronic immunization data to immunization registries or immunization information systems
• Submit electronic syndromic surveillance data to public health agencies
• Send reminder to patients per patient preference for follow up care
• Provide patients with timely access to their health information (including laboratory results, problem list, medication lists, medication allergies)

Updated March, 2011