Posts Tagged CHPL

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Robert Anthony from CMS Takes Questions on Stage One Meaningful Use in PhysiciansPractice Webinar

Today, PhysiciansPractice sponsored a webinar with CMS’s Robert Anthony on the topic of “Meaningful Use Stage 1.” Robert Anthony is a Health Insurance Specialist in the Office of E-Health Standards and Services (OESS) at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), where he focuses on the EHR Incentive Programs. Robert had a very pleasant voice to listen to, and he gets my vote for the best CMS Employee Speaker that I’ve heard!

I was not familiar with the OESS before, so I looked it up and found out what they do: Provide the overall leadership for and coordinate the implementation of Title IV of the HITECH Act. (Title IV = Medicare and Medicaid Health Information Technology)

Robert briefly reviewed what has happened to date with the EHR Incentive Program and the terms of the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The three main differences in the two programs are:

  1. The types of providers that are eligible for each program – information here.
  2. The volume of each type of patient needed to participate: no volume needed to participate in the Medicare program and 30% Medicaid patients for all eligible practitioners except pediatricians who only need 20% Medicaid patients.
  3. The tasks in year one in which the certified EHR is adopted. For Medicaid the practice only needs to attest that they have adopted, implemented or upgraded an EHR. In year one for Medicare the practice needs to attest to meaningful use for 90 days, which means data is collected and input into the attestation system.

The majority of the webinar was devoted to FAQs (my favorite part of any CMS-related education session!)

FAQs

Q: Can entities participate in the Medicare EHR Demonstration Project, and the Medicare or Medicaid EHR Incentive programs too?

A: Yes. The demonstration projects are about to be sunsetted (completed.)

Q: What information must be provided to patients to meet the requirement for a clinical summary at the end of each visit?

A: If system is certified, it will automatically provide the appropriate information for the clinical summary, which includes the patient’s problem list, medication list, medication allergy list, and diagnostic test results.

Robert suggested looking at the answer online at the CMS FAQ which I posted below:

In our final rule, we defined “clinical summary” as: an after-visit summary that provides a patient with relevant and actionable information and instructions containing, but not limited to, the patient name, provider’s office contact information, date and location of visit, an updated medication list, updated vitals, reason(s) for visit, procedures and other instructions based on clinical discussions that took place during the office visit, any updates to a problem list, immunizations or medications administered during visit, summary of topics covered/considered during visit, time and location of next appointment/testing if scheduled, or a recommended appointment time if not scheduled, list of other appointments and tests that the patient needs to schedule with contact information, recommended patient decision aids, laboratory and other diagnostic test orders, test/laboratory results (if received before 24 hours after visit), and symptoms.

The EP must include all of the above that can be populated into the clinical summary by certified EHR technology. If the EP’s certified EHR technology cannot populate all of the above fields, then at a minimum the EP must provide in a clinical summary the data elements for which all EHR technology is certified for the purposes of this program (according to §170.304(h)):

  • Problem List
  • Diagnostic Test Results
  • Medication List
  • Medication Allergy List

Q: How and when are incentive payments made?

A: After the online attestation is made (attestation thresholds must be attained), provider information is verified, then in 6 to 8 weeks a payment is generated. Payments are made in whatever way the entity typically gets CMS payments.

Q: What if patients do not routinely receive prescriptions during an office visit? How can the threshold be met? (Referring to computerized provider order entry (CPOE) for medication orders.)

A: For attestation, practices need to do this for 30% or more of all unique patients with at least one medication in their medication list. Note that patients with no medications in their medication list are excluded, so CMS believes this core initiative is realistic.

Q: For the Medicaid program, do you count the patient visit or the number of services (e.g. patient visit plus two tests equals three patient ticks) during the visit?

A: This question needs follow-up and if you send an email to editor@physicianspractice.com, they will be sent to CMS for the answer. Here is additional information from the CMS FAQ:

When calculating Medicaid patient volume or needy patient volume for the Medicaid EHR Incentive Program, are eligible professionals (EPs) required to use visits, or unique patients?

There are multiple definitions of encounter in terms of how it applies to the various requirements for patient volume.  Generally stated, a patient encounter is any one day where Medicaid paid for all or part of the service or Medicaid paid the co-pays, cost-sharing, or premiums for the service.  The requirements differ for EPs and hospitals.  In general, the same concept applies to needy individuals.  Please contact your State Medicaid agency for more information on which types of encounters qualify as Medicaid/needy individual patient volume.

Q: We are a new practice and plan on getting an EMR in the next 3 months. Can you walk me through the time lines?

A: If you haven’t chosen an EMR yet, your first year in either program will probably be 2012. In the first year of Medicare participation, you will need to use the EMR meaningfully for 90 days during calendar year 2012, and you have up to 60 days after the close of the calendar year to attest to your use. In the first year of Medicaid participation, you will need to adopt (acquire, install), implement (commence utilization of EHR such as train, data entry), or upgrade (expand) a certified EHR and attest to your activity at any time during the calendar year.

Q: What validation or oversight will CMS provide for the attestation process?

A: Before any payment is made, checks of provider eligibility and information will be done. Keep in mind that attestation is a legal process. Random audits will be put in place in the near future.

Q: Should a practice register if we don’t know which program we are going to use?

A: You can register at any time, and you can change from one program to the other prior to attesting, so you can register for one program and change before you begin the attestation.

Q: If your first year of attestation is in 2012, can you get the full 44K over the course of the program?

A: Yes.

Q: Can you verify if Physician Assistants are eligible for one of the programs?

A: Physician Assistants (PAs) are only eligible under the Medicaid program and must be the lead provider for a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) or Rural Health Clinic (RHC) to qualify.

Q: Does a radiology practice have to provide a clinical summary for patients?

A: No practice type is excluded from clinical summary mandate. CMS has not heard of any practice type having a problem with this so far. Remember, to achieve meaningful use, you must provide clinical summaries to patients for more than 50 percent of office visits within three business days. Exclusion: Any EP who has no office visits during the period of EHR reporting.

Q: Is the problem list supposed to be related to the chief compliant of the office visit?

A: Not necessarily. Practices are required to maintain an up-to-date problem list of current and active diagnoses based on ICD-9-CM or SNOMED CT (Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine – Clinical Terms) codes. To comply, at least 80 percent of all unique patients seen by eligible providers must have at least one entry (or an indication of none) recorded as structured data.

Q: What if questions were not able to be answered during the webinar?

A: Please e-mail Physicians Practice and we’ll get your answers from CMS. This could take several days, so please be patient. We will post your answers and all post-webinar questions at http://www.physicianspractice.com and notify you via e-mail as well.

Resources

A great list of additional resources were provided by Robert Anthony and Physicians Practice:

Resources from CMS

Resources from PhysiciansPractice.com

 

Other Posts I have written on this topic:

Step by Step Directions for Getting the EHR Incentive Money: My Notes From Last Week’s CMS Call

CMS Holds National Provider Calls for the Medicare EHR Incentive Program and EHR Attestation Q & A

Digging Into the Details of “Certified EMR” & Tips For Buying an EMR

How Do You Get That Stimulus Money for Using an Electronic Medical Record? (You Register!)

How My Practice Knew We Were Ready for EMR

10 Ways to Get More Out of Your PM, EMR or Any Medical Software

Posted in: Electronic Medical Records, Medicare & Reimbursement

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Step by Step Directions for Getting the EHR Incentive Money: My Notes From Last Week’s CMS Call

First the facts on what has taken place so far in the 2011 EHR Incentive Programs.

  • As of June 30th, the total of Medicare EHR Incentive Program payments is over $94 million.
  • As of June 30th, over $166 million has been paid in Medicaid EHR incentives since the program began in January.  In May and June, four states launched Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs – Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington, bringing the total states with Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs to 21.  More states will launch in July.
  • There are 68,001 active registrations of eligible professionals and eligible hospitals for the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs.

If your group hasn’t received a check and hasn’t registered for the Medicare or Medicaid Incentive Program, then this blog post is for you! For anyone who is really just beginning their EHR journey, today’s presentation clarified previous information given by CMS, as well as giving listeners new information about the programs.

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Posted in: Electronic Medical Records, Medicare & Reimbursement, PECOS

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Digging Into the Details of “Certified EMR” & Tips For Buying an EMR

Steps to digging under the meaning of EMR certification: 

Cocker Spaniel digging

Image via Wikipedia

  1. Click to see the most recent alphabetical list (by product name not company) of all products certified here.
  2. Find the company or companies you are using or are considering using.
  3. Check that the exact name of the product is what you have or might purchase.
  4. Check to find out if a module or part of the product is certified or if the complete product is certified.
  5. Check to make sure the version of the product is the version you have or will have.

If you have questions about each company’s exact criteria met, you are in luck!  On the ONC site here, you can click on each company’s detail (“View Criteria”) on the far right column labeled “Certification Status” to see what they have and don’t have.  Compare this to how you are anticipating using your EMR to meet meaningful use.  The more check marks a company has, the better-equipped they are (and more flexible) to meet your practice needs and to qualify for the stimulus money.

The ONC site with the Certified Health IT Product List (CHPL) is Version 1.0.  Version 2.0 is now being developed and will provide the Clinical Quality Measures each product was tested on, and the capability to query and sort the data for viewing. The next version will also provide the reporting number that will be accepted by CMS for purposes of attestation under the EHR (“meaningful use”) incentives programs.

You can tell ONC what you think would be helpful in the new version by emailing your ideas to ONC.certification@hhs.gov, with “CHPL” in the subject line.

If you’d like a list of just outpatient/medical practice EMR products or just inpatient / hospital products, I’ve split the big list into two smaller printable lists here:

Medical Practice / Outpatient

Hospital / Outpatient

Tips On Buying An EMR

To-do list book.

Remember that meeting meaningful use does not tell the whole story – if you are shopping for an EMR be prepared to go beyond a product’s certification status to consider:

  • Flexibility – does it make the practice conform to it or can it conform to the practice? How?
  • Templates and best practices – are you starting from scratch in developing protocols, templates and cheat sheets for your practice, or does it have a storehouse of examples to choose from or tweak?
  • Built for the physician, or the billing office, or the nurses, but doesn’t really meet the needs of all three? Make sure the functionality is not too skewed to one user group, but if it is, it should be somewhat skewed to the provider.
  • Interface and integration with your practice management system. Does the information flow both ways? Do you ever have to re-enter information because one side doesn’t speak to the other?
  • Interface with other inside and outside systems: Labs, imaging, hospital systems, ambulatory surgical center systems?
  • Built-in Resources: annual upgrade of HCPCS and ICD codes, drug compendium (Epocrates), comparative effectiveness prompting?
  • Mobile applications – EMR on your providers’ phones?
  • Data entry systems – laptops, notebooks, tablets, iPads, smartphones, voice recognition?
  • Hosting – in your office? at the hospital? at the vendor’s data center? in the cloud of your choice?
  • What’s the plan for ICD-10? Will they provide practice support and education for the change or will they just change the number of characters in the diagnosis code field?
  • Price, including annual maintenance and additional costs for training, implementation, on-site support during go-live, and additional licenses for providers or staff.

Posted in: Electronic Medical Records, Headlines, Medicare & Reimbursement

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