What are Your EHR Plans for the Next 12 Months?

The next twelve months present serious EHR scheduling challenges to medical practices.  You need to manage and consider the critical path needed to maintain your EHR strategy and tactics.  The key issues follow:

Should you be using Email for Patient Service?

The HIPAA Security Rules allow you to communicate with emails that include Protected Health Information as long as the patient acknowledges and accepts the risks associated with email.  The key question is should you?

Why Do You Need to Attain Meaningful Use by December 31, 2013?

The final rule for Stage 2 Meaningful Use (MU) presents a number of strategic challenges for practices that are attaining Meaningful Use and places those practices that will not meet Meaningful Use at a significant disadvantage.

How Can You Achieve and Attest to Meaningful Use?

In order to qualify for the Medicare EHR Incentive, you have to attest that each Eligible Provider (EP) meets the Meaningful Use requirements. The two key issues are how can you get a provider to work up to the MU Measure Requirements and how can you document the same for your Eligible Providers.

How does Your EHR Calculate Meaningful Use Measures?

In order to support Meaningful Use (MU) attestation, you need supporting documentation for each measure by Eligible Provider (EP).  The reports from you EHR will be the reference point for documenting your compliance with many MU Measures.  However, the MU measure calculations can dramatically different from EHR to EHR.

How Does Stage 2 Meaningful Use Relate to Stage 1?

Your Meaningful Use (MU) Strategy will have a significant impact on your ability to avoid extra work and disruption to your operation.  One of the most important issues to consider in your EHR and MU strategy is the Proposed Stage 2 MU Measures.  The proposed  Stage 2 Measures provide important insights into what you should choose as your Stage 1 Menu Items and even your EHR product and implementation plan

This following table presents the Stage 1 and 2 Measures in a way that will help you analyze the effect of Stage 2 on MU and focus your strategy to avoid problems:  

Do You Have HIPAA Security and Privacy Exposure?

With the focus on Meaningful Use Measures, many practices are neglecting procedures and policies needed to comply with HIPAA Security and Privacy.  The recently announced $100,000 settlement with a 5 doctor Phoenix based practice should trigger a closer look at your own compliance situation.

Why Are Patient Portals More Important Than You Think?

Patient portals facilitate the exchange of information between patients and physician practices.  What was once considered a nice option for your EHR is becoming a necessity.  Unfortunately, not all patient portals offer the same features.  Failure to acquire an adequate patient portal could limit your EHR benefits and increase your costs.

What MPL Issues are Associated with Meaningful Use (MU)?

Any transition of patient clinical records presents potential problems and issues that could affect medical professional liability (MPL).  Attainment of Meaningful Use is no different.

The Meaningful Use (MU) Criteria frames the use of a Certified EHR that enables a practice to qualify for the Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments.  Eligible Providers must fulfill 15 Core Measures and 5 of 10 Menu Set Measures to attain MU (For a complete list, go to https://www.cms.gov/EHRIncentivePrograms/Downloads/EP-MU-TOC-Core-and-MenuSet-Objectives.pdf ).  Many measures are associated with level of use based on a defined way of counting eligibility and usage.  For example, clinical summaries are to be provided for 50% of all office visits within 3 days of the visit to meet the clinical summary measure.

Your MU strategy should consider several MPL issues:

How Can You Attain Meaningful Use?

Attaining Meaningful Use (MU) is not an event, but a process.  As a practical matter, MU should be organized around packages of MU criteria in a sequence that leads to achieving Meaningful Use.  For example, it would not be practical to provide patients with electronic access to their patient records (MU Menu Set 5), until you maintain an electronic copy of patient health information (MU Core Measure 12). 

Meaningful Use can be divided into three stages: