The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 Stimulus Funding

The ARRA act provided for the reimbursement to healthcare providers who implement an EHR and place the system into "meaningful use" in their agency.

The ARRA act did not include Behavioral Healthcare adoption of an EHR and is being reviewed by Congress for amending the act. We will post any progress towards that once we learn of the changes. Unless you have a Medical Doctor (M.D.) on your staff, you will not qualify as a LCSW, Psychologist, Therapist, Case Worker or other behavioral healthcare professional

Below we've provided the eligibility requirements to be an Eligible Professional to qualify for funds.

ClinicTracker Connect will be ONC certified in 2012 to enable you to apply for eligible stimulus funds for your practice. We will work with you to help you through the attestation process. Please contact us at ClinicTracker@JAGProducts.com or 800-884-8182 for any questions about this process.

Eligibility Requirements for Professionals

Incentive payments for eligible professionals are based on individual practitioners.
If you are part of a practice, each eligible professional may qualify for an incentive payment if each eligible professional successfully demonstrates meaningful use of certified EHR technology.
Each eligible professional is only eligible for one incentive payment per year, regardless of how many practices or locations at which he or she provide services.
Hospital-based eligible professionals are not eligible for incentive payments. An eligible professional is considered hospital-based if 90% or more of his or her services are performed in a hospital inpatient (Place of Service code 21) or emergency room (Place of Service code 23) setting.

Who is an Eligible Professional under the Medicare EHR Incentive Program?

Doctor of medicine (M.D.) or osteopathy
Doctor of dental surgery or dental medicine
Doctor of podiatry
Doctor of optometry
Chiropractor

Who is an Eligible Professional under the Medicaid EHR Incentive Program?

Physicians (primarily doctors of medicine and doctors of osteopathy)
Nurse practitioner
Certified nurse-midwife
Dentist
Physician assistant who furnishes services in a Federally Qualified Health Center or Rural Health Clinic that is led by a physician assistant.

To qualify for an incentive payment under the Medicaid EHR Incentive Program, an eligible professional must meet one of the following criteria:

Have a minimum 30% Medicaid patient volume*
Have a minimum 20% Medicaid patient volume, and is a pediatrician*
Practice predominantly in a Federally Qualified Health Center or Rural Health Center and have a minimum 30% patient volume attributable to needy individuals

* Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) patients do not count toward the Medicaid patient volume criteria.

Meaningful Use Criteria and Measures

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 specifies three main components of Meaningful Use:

The use of a certified EHR in a meaningful manner, such as e-prescribing.
The use of certified EHR technology for electronic exchange of health information to improve quality of health care.
The use of certified EHR technology to submit clinical quality and other measures.

Simply put, "meaningful use" means providers need to show they're using certified EHR technology in ways that can be measured significantly in quality and in quantity.

What are the requirements for Stage 1 of Meaningful Use (2011 and 2012)?

Meaningful use includes both a core set and a menu set of objectives that are specific to eligible professionals or eligible hospitals and CAHs.

For eligible professionals, there are a total of 25 meaningful use objectives. To qualify for an incentive payment, 20 of these 25 objectives must be met.

There are 15 required core objectives.
The remaining 5 objectives may be chosen from the list of 10 menu set objectives.

For eligible hospitals and CAHs, there are a total of 24 meaningful use objectives. To qualify for an incentive payment, 19 of these 24 objectives must be met.

There are 14 required core objectives.
The remaining 5 objectives may be chosen from the list of 10 menu set objectives.

What are "Clinical Quality Measures"?

To demonstrate meaningful use successfully, eligible professionals, eligible hospitals and CAHs are required also to report clinical quality measures specific to eligible professionals or eligible hospitals and CAHs.

Eligible professionals must report on 6 total clinical quality measures: 3 required core measures (substituting alternate core measures where necessary) and 3 additional measures (selected from a set of 38 clinical quality measures).
Eligible hospitals and CAHs must report on all 15 of their clinical quality measures.

Mandatory and Menu Meaningful Use Criteria

Core set: All 15 Measures Required

Demographics (50%)
Vitals: BP and BMI (50%)
Problem list: ICD-9-CM or SNOMED (80%)
Active medication list (80%)
Medication allergies (80%)
Smoking status (50%)
Patient clinical visit summary (50% in 3 days)
Hospital discharge instructions (50%)
- or -
Patient with electronic copy (50% in 3 days)
e-Prescribing (40%)
CPOE (30% including a med)
Drug-drug and drug-allergy interactions (functionality enabled)
Exchange critical information (perform test)
Clinical decision support (one rule)
Security risk analysis
Report clinical quality (BP, BMI, Smoke, plus 3 others)

Menu set: Select 5 of 10

Drug-formulary checks (one report)
Structured lab results (40%)
Patients by conditions (one report)
Send patient-specific education (10%)
Medication reconciliation (50%)
Summary care record at transitions (50%)
Feed immunization registries (perform at least one test)
Feed syndromic surveillance (perform at least one test)
Send reminders to patients for preventative and follow-up care (20% > 65yrs. < 5yrs.)
Patient electronic access to labs, problems, meds and allergies (10% in 4 days)

The Medicare EHR Incentive Program

Eligible professionals can receive up to $44,000 over five years under the Medicare EHR Incentive Program. There's an additional incentive for eligible professionals who provide services in a Health Professional Shortage Area (HSPA).

The Medicaid EHR Incentive Program

The Medicaid EHR Incentive Program is voluntarily offered by individual states and territories and may begin as early as 2011, depending on the state.
Eligible professionals can receive up to $63,750 over the six years that they choose to participate in the program.

To learn more about the Eligible Professional Core Objectives, visit this link at the CMS website: http://www.cms.gov/EHRIncentivePrograms/Downloads/EP-MU-TOC.pdf

Many of the individual objectives can be "excluded" based on your situation, so each practice must review them for applicability. If you have any questions, please contact Mark Shriro, Director of Marketing, JAG Products at 1-800-884-8182 ext. 9 to review your situation.

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