Meaningful Use

Question 1

What is the ARRA?

Answer 1

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which included the HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Care Act)

Question 2

What is the HITECH?

Answer 2

Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Care Act, which authorized incentive payments to specific types of hospitals and HCP for adapting interoperable health information technology and EHRs.

Question 3

What is Meaningful Use?

Answer 3

Using certified EHR technology in a meaningful way:

1. Improve quality, safety, efficiency and reduce health disparities
2. Engage patients and families in their health care
3. Improve care coordination
4. Improve population and public health
5. Maintain privacy and security

Question 4

What are the three main components of Meaningful Use?

Answer 4

1. Use of certified EHR in a meaningful manner (e-prescribing)
2. Use of certified EHR technology for electronic exchange of health information to improve quality of health care
3. Use of certified EHR technology to submit clinical quality measures (CQM) and other such measures

Question 5

What is MIPS?

Answer 5

The Merit-based Incentive Payment System includes 4 pillars that affect how Medicare will make payments based on:

1. Quality
2. Improved Activities
3. Advancing care information
4. Cost

Question 6

How can certified EHR technology help with quality measurement reporting?

Answer 6

1. It may reduce your workload

2. It may help you earn an electronic reporting bonus payment.

Question 7

How can EHRs benefit medical practices?

Answer 7

1. Reduced transcription costs
2. Reduced chart pull, storage, and re-filing costs
3. Improved documentation and automated coding capabilities
4. Reduced medical errors through better access to patient data and error prevention alerts
5. Improved patient health/quality of care through better disease management and patient education

Question 8

How can EHRs help care coordination?

Answer 8

1. Better availability of patient information can reduce medical errors and unnecessary tests
2. Better availability of information can reduce the chance that one specialist will not know about an unrelated be relevant condition being managed by another specialist.
3. Better care coordination can lead to better quality of care and improved patient outcomes

Question 9

How can EHRs help improve public health outcomes?

Answer 9

1. It can help identify/work with patients to manage specific risk factors or combinations of risk factors such as:
   - how many patients that have HTN under control
   - how many patients that have Diabetic BG under control
   - Detect patterns of adverse events and enable at-risk patients to be notified quickly