Welcome to MUIWORKS. The Basics of Meaningful Use and our role in helping you are on this page. Follow-up on a topic that interests you by clicking the matching menu item above.
MU EHR in Action
What is MU?: Meaningful Use is a Federal program to encourage physicians and hospitals to adopt and use an Electronic Health Record product with a special inclusive feature set. Qualification is through Medicare or Medicaid claiming. For qualifying doctors and hospitals, an incentive payment is provided over a period of years. For a given applicant, each ’participation year’ has its own standard regardless of the calendar year. It has started and will run through 2019. While hospitals may apply directly, clinics and practices which provide doctors an EHR must ask them individually to designate them to receive the incentive payment. The applying practice or clinic must also select from the hundreds of Meaningful Use certified EHR products and implement it. Those applying under Medicare must show Meaningful Use of the certified EHR in the first year. For those applying under Medicaid, they need only acquire the certified EHR product in the first year to receive and incentive. In following years, they must meet the same standards as the Medicare applicants.
Looking for Value
MU’s Value: For an EHR product to qualify for the Meaningful Use program, the vendor must bundle together functions that were not previous standard for EHRs. These include e-prescribing and electronic import of laboratory results. No longer do these functions require custom integration. This new inclusive and now industry standard feature set requires products to compete in other areas; price, ease of implementation and ease of use. Many qualifying EHR products can be accessed over the internet on laptops and iPads through WiFi connections. Many can be customized to fit a doctor’s style of works. For the first time, recording of treatment as it happens by all practitioners supported by a record with all tests and meds included is possible. These significant changes are supported by Federal incentives up to $63.750 per physician for Medicaid and $40,000 per physician for Medicare. Hospital incentives are calculated differently.
Getting it Done
How To MU: Our guidance is for healthcare organizations that can receive an incentive through the physicians that employ them. For these organizations, the first step is to determine which of those healthcare professionals are willing to designate the organization to receive an incentive. If the organization is applying under Medicaid rules, there is the further step of determining if the doctor qualifies by the proportion of paid Medicaid services. A certified EHR that fits the needs and budget of the clinic must be chosen. Under Medicaid rules in the first year, the clinic can receive an incentive for adopting a certified EHR for each qualifying physician who made a designation. Under Medicare the certified EHR must be used to meet Meaningful Use Stage 1 Criteria for a 90 day period before the incentive is awarded.
Chuck Penoi
MUIWORKS Helps: The Meaningful Use process is new. Each step of the process has an inherent element of uncertainty. Still, we know that the certified EHR products have the potential to add a new dimension of value to healthcare. The choice to wait util things sort themselves out brings with it is the risk of falling behind the ‘learning curve’ for the kind of health care that these EHRs are enabling. To move ahead, you’ll need sufficient knowledge of the specifics of Meaningful Use process to do the right thing at the right time. We can bring that knowledge to you. Once you have that knowledge working company things get down to earth. If you seek help, we hope you choose MUIWORKS. You may have question about your eligibility and the process. We welcome the chance to answer your questions and to prove that we can be a real asset to your company.