From The Center for Medicare and Medicare Services:

The Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs provide a financial incentive for the "meaningful use" of certified EHR technology to achieve health and efficiency goals. By putting into action and meaningfully using an EHR system, providers will reap benefits beyond financial incentives–such as reduction in errors, availability of records and data, reminders and alerts, clinical decision support, and e-prescribing/refill automation

What is "Meaningful Use"?

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

1. The use of certified EHR in a meaningful manner, such as e-prescribing.
2. The use of certified EHR technology for electronic exchange of health information to improve quality of health care.
3. 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

To Download Stage 1 EHR Meaningful Use Specification Sheets, Click the image below:

Certified Health IT Product List

On July 13, 2010, the Secretary published in the Federal Register a final rule that adopted standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria for EHR technology. The final rule was released in conjunction with the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs final rule.

EHR technology that has been certified by an ONC-ATCB must be used in order to qualify for incentive payments. The temporary certification program provides assurance that the EHR technology health care providers adopt is technically capable of supporting their efforts to achieve meaningful use. Contact your vendor to determine if your EHR technology has been certified.

To see which products are currently on the certified list, click the image below: