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. 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. Download our fact sheet to learn more.
Nuesoft is closely following the developments as they unfold with the department of Health and Human Services and other government agencies, and is committed to complying with the various stipulations set forward in the ARRA; including meeting new certification requirements for vendors, and ensuring that our products meet the functional criteria that will entitle users to the stimulus funding.
2011 Objectives for Meaningful Use
We are committed to meeting all objectives as finalized by the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) in Spring 2010. NueMD meets 23 of the HIT's 2011 Objectives for meaningful use as currently drafted (see below), including:
Improve quality, safety, efficiency and reduce health disparities
- Use CPOE for all orders
- Implement drug-drug, drug-allergy, drug-formulary checks
- Maintain an up-to-date problem list of current and active diagnoses based on ICD-9 or SNOMED
- Generate and transmit permissible prescriptions electronically (eRx)
- Maintain active medication list
- Record demographics: preferred language, insurance type, gender, race, ethnicity
- Record advance directives
- Record vital signs: height, weight, blood pressure
- Calculate and display BMI
- Record smoking status
- Incorporate lab-test results into EHR as structured data
- Implement one clinical decision rule relevant to specialty or high clinical priority
- Document a progress note for each encounter
Engage patients and families
- Check insurance eligibility electronically from public and private payers, where possible
- Sumbit claims electronically to public and private payers
- Provide patients with an electronic copy of their health information (including lab results, problem list, medication lists, allergies) upon request
- Provide patients with timely electronic access to their health information (including lab results, problem list, medication lists, allergies)
- Provide access to patient-specific education resources
- Provide clinical summaries for patients for each encounter
Improve care coordination
- Capability to exchange key clinical information (e.g. problem list, medication list, allergies, test results) among providers of care and patient authorized entities electronically
- Perform medication reconciliation at relevant encounters and each transition of care
Ensure adequate privacy and security protections for personal health information
- Compliance with HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules
- Compliance with fair data sharing practices set forth in the Nationwide Privacy and Security Framework