Ehr Regulations

EHR Regulations

HCS 430

April 14, 2015

EHR Regulations

The centers for Medicare and Medicaid services provide healthcare coverage for people with disabilities, chronic health conditions, and for those who are sixty-five years of age and older. In the past four years, Medicare and Medicaid started an electronic health record incentive program called “meaningful use”. Eligible professionals and hospitals that started the HER incentive program in 2011 will keep receiving payments until 2016. Eligible professionals are to successfully prove meaningful use for each participating year in the program. Those professionals who can demonstrate meaningful use will receive up to $43,720 over five continuous years. There are three stages of the EHR incentive meaningful use program. 2014 was the last year for professionals and hospitals to enroll and participate and receive an incentive payment. EHR incentive programs are part of new legislations and regulations that was implemented to certify electronic health record technology in order to improve safety, quality, efficiency, and eliminate health disparities (HealthIT.gov, 2015)

Eligible professionals are usually physicians, practitioners, chiropractors, etc. Those hospitals that have eligibility with Medicare and Medicaid are called “eligible hospitals”. Also critical access hospitals (CAH) are small in a rural area. Eligible hospitals and eligible professionals who participate in the EHR incentive program were required to meet certain criteria for three years in stage one of the program that started in 2011. Eligible professionals are to meet thirteen required core objectives; five menu objectives from a list of nine which is a total of eighteen objectives. Private physicians and hospitals share basically the same required core and menu objectives. A required core objective that is highly used is the computerized physician order entry (CPOE) The CPOE is used to capture a physician’s instructions for patient care...