EHR Certification for Meaningful Use

Author:

Jason Fortin, Erica Drazen

The HITECH Act established incentive programs under Medicare and Medicaid for eligible professionals and hospitals that demonstrate “meaningful use of certified EHR technology.”   A “certified” electronic health record is a system that has been verified as being capable of performing the specified capabilities needed to achieve meaningful use. The requirements for certification were defined in the final rule on the Initial Set of Standards, Implementation Specifications, and Certification Criteria for Electronic Health Record Technology issued by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT on July 28, 2010.

Providers need to be sure to take all of the certification requirements adopted by ONC into account when looking at meaningful use objectives and measures. The certification criteria are closely aligned with the meaningful use objectives from CMS, and the final rule from ONC provides essential details on how each measure must be met.

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