The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid has announced that six more states, including California have joined the Medicaid EHR incentive program for eligible providers that utilize an ONC Certified EMR System. 



This now gives providers the choice to choose between either the Medicare or Medicaid EHR incentive programs. The DHCS website has more information on the Medicaid incentive program. 



Medicare Incentive Paid Over 5 Years: $44,000 Medicaid Incentive Paid Over...

Today October 3rd, 2011 marks the last day for this calendar year 2011 to start your 90 day reporting period to meet Meaningful Use for stage one. Meeting stage one is the first step in Meaningful Use and receiving the incentive monies.

 Does your office have a plan in place for meeting Meaningful Use? 

I recommend that every practice sits down and creates a timeline and checklist for implementing and meeting Meaningful Use, whether you plan on attesting for 2011 or if you plan on attesting in 2012.  

Below is a sample timeline and checklist for meeting Meaningful Use, every practice will vary in time and needs. 

In this post we will look at the Meaningful Use, core measure three on Maintaining Problem List for patients. This measure records how many patients have an up-to-date (means the most recent diagnosis known by the Eligible Professional (EP)) problem list that is contained in their medical record within the EMR.  This measure checks that more than 80% of all unique patients (any patient that is seen by the EP more than once during the 90 day reporting period and is only counted once in the denominator) seen during the 90 day reporting period have a record of at least one entry of an active problem (using ICD-9 or SNOMED-CT) or that the patient has no know problems.  Attesting for this measure is based off of your patients data in the form of a Numerator/Denominator. Numerator = The number of patients included in the denominator that have a record of at least...

Moving on in our Meaningful Use Breakdown series we will take a closer look at the core measure two, Drug Interaction Checks. This core measure checks to see that the EP (Eligible Professionals) are using EMR technology in regards to checking medications that they are prescribing to patients for possible drug-drug and drug-allergy interactions. Attesting for this measure is a yes or no.  Yes = Drug-drug and drug-allergy interaction checks were turned on during the full 90 day reporting period.  No = Drug-drug and drug-allergy interaction checks were NOT turned on for the full 90 day reporting period. Within the EMR these alerts should automatically appear when an interaction is found. This feature is already included within the Practice Expert EMR. ...

Kicking off our Meaningful Use Breakdown series we will be deconstructing the first core measure, CPOE (Computer Provider Order Entry). The first measure is a the set of 15 core required measures for Eligible Professionals (EP) to show that they are meeting Meaningful Use. 

The CPOE measure checks to see that all unique patients (any patient seen more than once during the 90 day reporting period is to be counted only once in the denominator), more than 30% of those unique patients seen have at least one medication that was ordered using CPOE.   Using a CPOE in an EMR is most commonly used with the eRx module. The Practice Expert EMR has this ability using the eRx module...

Deciding to buy an EMR solution can be a tough process. Who do you choose? What questions to ask? Will it work for my practice? Will it be cost effective?  What's the downtime?, etc....

Here are some questions that you should be asking your EMR vendors in the buying process to make sure you know what your getting into. These questions have been complied from different lists out of asked by our clients, LinkedIn, Physicians Practice, and EMR Tips. We have taken 15 of them and answered them based on our Practice Expert EMR.

We are starting a series in which we will go over the 15 Core Measures and 10 Menu Set Measures that are required to attest for Meaningful Use for the year 2011. Our goal is to help you the eligible professionals better understand and meet Meaningful Use.  Starting on September 5, 2011 we will review the first core measure COPE for Medication Orders and the requirements needed to attest for this measure. There after we will just start going down the list and reviewing each core and menu set measure in detail.  If you have questions that you would like to be addressed leave us a comment and the best way to reach you, either by email or as reply on this blog. ...

A number of physicians and hospitals have already attested for meaningful use, which is a big accomplishment and a step in the direction of the goals set by the HITECH Act, but what are the benefits for you as a provider? What have you seen change in your practice?  Our friends at Software Advice asked if I would share a link to a survey that they are conducting on the benefits of adopting an EMR, so here it is. http://www.softwareadvice.com/articles/medical/benefits-of-emr-software-survey-1081611/ The survery is a short 20-question survey that...

CMS has a proposed rule that will exclude physicians from the Medicare eRx penalty if they have or will have a certified EMR in 2011. Also, the rule will be adding four new hardships for the eRx Medicare mandate. With the June 30th, 2011 deadline already passed, CMS recently announced this proposed rule should be finalized in August. The rule will provide relief to providers that were unable to meet the eRx requirements, and allow more time to meet those requirements. CMS has taken into account the number of comments that it has already received and the comments from such organizations such as the AMA in revising some of the potentially burdensome rules.  Physicians will be able to claim one of the several hardships available through a special website by October 1st, 2011 to be excluded from the eRx Medicare mandate. The four additional hardships that will be added are: Physicians who register to participate in the...

This week Cal-Med signed up with the Drummond Group to start the testing process to become a certified EMR software solution. The Drummond Group is a recognized certifying body by the federal government.



We are very pleased to announce this news and are looking forward to the process of testing and becoming fully certified to meet the government stimulus requirements. 

The first available date for testing with the Drummond Group is August 19th, 2011. Cal-Med has locked in this testing date and will start testing on that day. 

Cal-Med has taken precise steps to...