HIT Meaningful Use - Requirements

1. Register with CMS and, if they are eligible for a Medicaid payment, with a single state Medicaid agency.
2. Ensure that they have certified EHR technology.
3. Ensure that they meet all of the requirements of meaningful use, including reporting of clinical quality measures directly from the EHR.
4. Successfully attest to meeting both the certification and meaningful use requirements.

Both ONC and CMS have been involved in developing the regulations and program for electronic health records meaningful use incentives. You need to be familiar with both sets of information. Below are important resources for understanding what is involved in meeting the meaningful use requirements, including AHA analysis, the actual regulatory text, and more recent guidance from the federal agencies.

• AHA Meaningful Use Overview Spreadsheet
  This chart includes all of the meaningful use objectives for hospitals. It brings together the requirements from both the CMS rule and the ONC rule. For some objectives, such as entering demographic data and providing patients with an electronic copy of their records, hospital must use specific standards that are provided in the ONC rule to achieve the objectives laid out in the CMS rule. The final column in the table identifies when standards are needed. It also provides a link to federal government resources that fully describe the requirements for certification and use of standards.
• ONC Code of Federal Regulations
• CMS Code of Federal Regulations
• ONC Meaningful Use Certification Criteria and Standards Grid
• CMS Hospital MU Definitions
• NIST Implementation Specifications and Certification Criteria (key reading)
• ONC Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
• CMS Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
• AHA Regulatory Advisory on Proposed Rules of Stage 2 of Meaningful Use of EHRs
• AHA Regulatory Advisory on Registration and Attestation
• CMS Guidance on the Registration process
• CMS Guidance on the Attestation process