California Aims to Help Health Providers Obtain EHR Incentive Payments

California has set a goal of having 10,000 eligible health care providers by June receive Medicaid incentive payments for demonstrating meaningful use of certified electronic health records, according to a CMS blog post published recently by National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari and CMS Acting Administrator Marilyn Tavenner.

Under the 2009 federal economic stimulus package, health care providers who demonstrate meaningful use of certified electronic health record systems can qualify for Medicaid and Medicare incentive payments.

Nationwide Goals

In the blog post, Mostashari and Tavenner wrote that they have set a goal of helping 100,000 health care providers qualify for Medicare or Medicaid incentive payments this year.

As of February, more than 59,000 eligible health care professionals and more than 2,000 hospitals had received Medicare or Medicaid incentive payments, they noted.

States’ Progress

Mostashari and Tavenner wrote that many states, including California, “are partnering with local stakeholder organizations to make sure providers get the help and encouragement to achieve ‘meaningful use’ and assistance with overcoming any barriers that are blocking their progress”.

EHR Assistance

SFMS is partnering with Regional and Local Extension Centers to provide assistance with EHR adoption and implementation. REC and LEC support and serve health care providers to help them quickly become adept and meaningful users of EHRs. The target audience of RECs is primary care clinicians, but many RECs offer assistance to specialists, as well. If you need assistance as you look into transitioning to EHRs and participating in the CMS EHR Incentive Programs, consider contacting:

California Health Information Partnership and Services Organization (CalHIPSO)

www.calhipso.org
(888) 589-4897

 

Lumetra, San Francisco Local Extension Center

www.lumetrasolutions.com     

(415) 677-2081

Assistance with EHR Adoption

Are you a primary care provider looking for assistance with Meaningful Use and EHR? SFMS is partnering with Lumetra, a local extension center for San Francisco, to fill available slots for priority primary care providers (PPCPs) to receive subsidized services from CalHIPSO.

These openings will be competitive and enrolled on a first come first serve basis. The following conditions apply:

• The referred provider must be eligible for CalHIPSO services and MUST be able to reach Meaningful Use – No specialists.
• All of the enrollment spots (M1 credit) have been already filled.  We are looking to replace Bay Area providers who have been enrolled, but have let us know that they will not be going live and/or reaching Meaningful Use.
• Since theses providers serve as replacements for providers who had already earned enrollment credit, we will not be able to pay the medical society for their enrollments.

Please contact Jeff Gutman at jgutman@lumetrasolutions.com or (415) 677-8447 to enroll reserve providers.

The eligible Bay Area counties include San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Contra Costa, Alameda, Santa Clara, San Benito, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Merced.

3/12 CMS National Provider Call: Stage 2 Requirements for the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs

More than $3.2 billion in Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record (EHR) incentive payments have been made since the program began last year; more than 191,000 eligible professionals, eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals are actively registered. CMS recently announced a proposed rule for Stage 2 requirements and other changes to the program, which will be published on March 7.

CMS will host a National Provider Call on Monday, March 12, from 9:30 am to 11 am Pacific Standard Time. The call will provide an overview of the proposed rule, so providers can learn how to receive EHR incentive payments.

The CMS proposed rule can be found at http://www.OFR.gov/OFRUpload/OFRData/2012-04443_PI.pdf. For more information on the EHR Incentive Programs, visit http://www.CMS.gov/EHRIncentivePrograms.

CMS Releases New Health IT ‘Meaningful Use’ Rules

It’s time to take electronic health records to the next level. CMS on Thursday released their second-stage guidelines for “meaningful use” of electronic records, which advocates say have the potential to reduce medical errors and streamline care. The proposed rules require doctors and hospitals to significantly step up their usage, as well as better engage patients and improve the transferability of records.

Under the proposed Stage 2 standards, hospitals as well as eligible professionals—the latter category includes physicians not employed by hospitals—would have to use Computerized physician order entry (CPOE) for more than 60% of medication, laboratory and radiology orders, double the share required under the Stage 1 standards.

The CPOE requirement is one of more than a dozen core objectives that hospitals and EPs would have to meet as part of demonstrating their meaningful use of electronic health-record systems, which would make them eligible to receive federal health IT incentive payments.

Other core objectives for both hospitals and EPs include the use of electronic prescribing for more than 50% of prescriptions issued, the recording of demographic data for more than 50% of patients, recording of vital signs in more than 80% of patient encounters and recording smoking status for more than 80% of patients.

In an effort to promote electronic engagement with patients, Stage 2 would require that more than 50% of patients be provided online access to their health information and demonstrate that more than 10% had actually accessed that information.

Among the proposed menu objectives for EPs are electronic recording of family health history for more than 20% of patients, successful ongoing transmission of syndromic surveillance data, successful ongoing transmission of cancer case information and successful ongoing transmission of data to a specialized cancer registry. For hospitals, menu objectives include electronic recording of advance directives for more than 50% of patients and the use of electronic prescribing for more than 50% of discharge prescriptions.

San Francisco to start Health Information Exchange

HealthShare Bay Area is a health information exchange that will electronically link health records within the San Francisco medical community, as well as the greater Bay Area. Exchange of this data is expected to improve efficiency of healthcare delivery, decrease costs, and ultimately improve patient care within San Francisco. The San Francisco Business Times published an article in its recent issue that discussed HealthShare Bay Area and prominently mentioned SFMS.

By Chris Rauber

Behind closed doors, a number of San Francisco hospitals and medical groups are working with the San Francisco Medical Society and the city’s Department of Public Health to launch a health information exchange linking local emergency rooms and other clinical sites.

By 2015, participants expect to invest nearly $11.7 million in the effort, dubbed HealthShare Bay Area, designed to improve quality while cutting administrative and unnecessary clinical costs.

The initial group of participants includes the medical society; Dignity Health (formerly Catholic Healthcare West) and its two San Francisco hospitals, St. Mary’s Medical Center and Saint Francis Memorial Hospital; San Francisco General Hospital and the city’s network of community health clinics; Brown & Toland Physicians; Hill Physicians Medical Group; UC San Francisco; Chinese Hospital Association; California Pacific Medical Center and the Mayor’s Office. Insiders say the only big players not to sign on are the VA Hospital and Kaiser Permanente, although Kaiser is sitting in on meetings.

The initiative has been housed under the Medical Society umbrella, but is looking to gain independent nonprofit status. It’s also signing up participants in San Mateo County and the Easy Bay, including John Muir Health.

The project—co-chaired by Dr. Arieh Rosenbaum, a hospitalist affiliated with CPMC, and Dr. Amy Berlin—isn’t talking publicly yet about its plans, but expects to in coming months.

A business plan dated Nov. 2, 2011, said HealthShare Bay Area hopes to raise $1.25 million in grants and $475,000 in seed money from founding organizations to fuel its first two years of operation, and to be self-sustaining by 2013.

Source: San Francisco Business Times, February 17, 2012.