Last week we held a webinar intended to help with your Meaningful Use process: Troubleshooting Your Meaningful Use Reports.
Unsurprisingly, many of you had several questions regarding Meaningful Use as we understand that this can be a complicated process at times. To help make your attestation process easier, we've answered the most frequently asked Meaningful Use questions and have split it up into a four-part series.
Our hope is that this can be a resource for your practice moving forward in your Meaningful Use attestation, no matter which stage you're currently at.
RELATED: Meaningful Use FAQ Part I
Meaningful Use FAQ Part II
1. Are we going to need to attest for MU every year from now on, or can we choose not to attest at some point due to hassles/costs, etc.?- Answer: Meaningful Use isn’t going anywhere, so you will have to continue to attest to the objectives, or you will face a penalty on your Medicare claims.
- Answer: Yes, you can choose any consecutive 90 days (doesn’t have to be a quarter) that you met the requirements (remember, this includes the security risk analysis).
- Answer: It is not limited to only EMN’s with office visit codes, so if you want this feature enabled, but you don’t want every EMN that is signed to merge a summary, there is another option to PROMPT to merge a clinical summary, which may be more ideal depending on your practice. (Tools > Preferences > Search Preferences > Clinical Summary > Go To Selected Preference)
- Answer: Clinical Decision Support Rules should be setup prior to the start of your 90 day reporting period so that they are active and popping up while you are capturing your Meaningful Use Data. This is proven in a meaningful use audit with screenshots of the rules setup (preparing for attestation will be another webinar on November 18th at noon if you are unsure about this). If audited, a letter can be provided by Nextech or NewCrop stating it cannot be turned off.
- Answer: Implementation can help to ensure your Meaningful Use data collection is setup correctly.
- Answer: Everyone, regardless of participation starting year or specialty, will be attesting to the Modified Stage 2 Objectives beginning 2015.
- Answer: If you run the Stage 2 Meaningful Use report, Core 15 a & b correlate to the new Health Information Exchange Objective #5.
- Answer: Nextech is in the process of revamping the patient portal. We will also implement what is required for Stage 3. Specific details will be released at a later date.
- Answer: Attestations for the 2015 reporting period will have to be completed between January 4th – February 29th, 2016.
- Answer: Objective 1, Protect Patient Health Information, is completed via a Security Risk Analysis. These are typically performed by your IT and they need to be completed and DATED within the reporting period that you choose! This is very important and when it isn’t completed, it’s the number 1 reason why offices fail their meaningful use audits.