Updated FAQs on Participation in EHR Incentive Programs

To keep you informed of the latest information on the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs, CMS has recently updated three FAQs providing clarification on how to attest to certain objectives and measures.

(FAQ 9690) Question: When reporting on the Summary of Care objective in the EHR Incentive Program, which transitions would count toward the numerator of the measures?

Answer: A transition of care is defined as the movement of a patient from one setting of care (hospital, ambulatory, primary care practice, ambulatory specialty care practice, long-term care, home health, rehabilitation facility) to another. To count toward the Summary of Care objective for providers sharing access to an EHR, the transition or referral may take place between providers with different billing identities such as a different National Provider Identifier (NPI) or hospital CMS Certification Number (CCN) … Read the full FAQ

(FAQ 11984) Question: If an eligible professional (EP) in the EHR Incentive Programs is part of a group practice that has achieved ongoing submission to a public health agency (PHA), but the EP himself/herself did not administer any immunizations to any of the populations for which data is collected by their jurisdiction’s immunization registry during their EHR reporting period, can he/she attest to meeting the measure since they are part of the group practice that is submitting data to the registry?

Answer: If a provider does not administer immunizations, they should not attest to the measure; they must claim the exclusion. If a provider does administer immunizations, but did not have any for a particular EHR reporting period, they are not required to claim the exclusion as long as they have done any necessary registration and testing and are reporting when they do have the data to report.

(FAQ 8231) Question: While the denominator for measures used to calculate meaningful use in the EHR Incentive Programs is restricted to patients seen during the EHR reporting period, is the numerator also restricted to activity during the EHR reporting period or can actions for certain meaningful use measures be counted in the numerator if they took place after the EHR reporting period has ended?

Answer: The criteria for a numerator is not constrained to the EHR reporting period unless expressly stated in the numerator statement for a given meaningful use measure. The numerator for the following meaningful use measures should include only actions that take place within the EHR reporting period: Preventive Care (Patient Reminders) and Secure Electronic Messaging.

For all other meaningful use measures, the actions may reasonably fall outside the EHR reporting period timeframe but must take place no earlier than the start of the reporting year and no later than the date of attestation in order for the patients to be counted in the numerator, unless a longer look-back period is specifically indicated for the objective or measure. This FAQ relates to prior program years and has been archived as of April 10, 2015.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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