Meaningful Use

Portrait of Carol Bean

Certified EHR/Health IT Products List Now Available

Carol Bean | November 30, 2010

Health care providers who are eligible to participate in the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs now have a new tool to help them on their road to meaningful use. As of November, ONC’s official Certified Health IT Product List (CHPL) identifies EHR technologies that have been tested and certified as being technically capable of supporting those providers’ achievement of meaningful use based on Stage 1 criteria outlined in HHS rules published on July 28 of this year.

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Portrait of Dr. David Blumenthal

Meaningful Use Gets Support from Private Sector

Dr. David Blumenthal | August 13, 2010

Health IT is a team effort. The whole point is to increase communication and coordination among the different players in the health care system. You just can’t go it alone in this field.
The good news is that, when you have a solid plan and a worthy objective, lots of talented people want to join the team and contribute to the effort.

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Portrait of Joshua Seidman

Guiding Principles for Stage 1 Meaningful Use Adjustments

Joshua Seidman | July 30, 2010

The release of the CMS Medicare & Medicaid EHR Incentive Program Final Rule [link] on July 14 marked the end of the Stage 1 process for defining “meaningful use.” The final steps of that process involved reviewing, synthesizing, analyzing and reacting to more than 2,200 comments received from the public. The comments addressed big-picture principles and arcane details, and just about everything in between. We were very grateful for the public input and are very excited to announce the Stage 1 Meaningful Use requirements.

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Portrait of Dr. David Blumenthal

Why Be a Meaningful User?

Dr. David Blumenthal | April 27, 2010

As I write, physicians throughout the United States are deciding whether to become meaningful users of electronic health records by 2011 when Medicare and Medicaid start making extra payments to meaningful users.  For some the decision may be pretty simple.  Almost 200,000 doctors already have adopted EHRs and are using them at a basic or sophisticated level.  For these physicians, the journey to meaningful use, and its financial and clinical rewards, may be comparatively short. Many other doctors,

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