EMR/EHR Incentives

To qualify for HITECH EMR incentives you must:

• Be an eligible medical provider who bills Medicare or Medicaid
• Use an EMR that has been certified by The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
• Meet 20 Meaningful Use criteria
• Attest to CMS that you Meaningfully Used a certified EMR system for 90 consecutive days in 2011. The reporting process will get more complex after 2011.

EHR Incentive Payments

Medicare will pay out HITECH incentive funds relative to your practice’s total annual allowable Medicare charges. During the provider’s first year in the program (2011 or 2012), Medicare will pay providers 75 percent of their total annual allowable Medicare charges with a ceiling of $18,000. Thus, if a provider charges Medicare in excess of $24,000 in allowable charges, the maximum he will receive is $18,000 in EHR incentives.

Providers may begin the attestation process after 90-days of Meaningful Use of a certified EHR system. If they have not achieved $24,000 in allowable charges at the time of attestation, Medicare will hold off on disbursing the incentive payment until the provider has either achieved $24,000 in charges or March of the following year. This is done to maximize the total payment that providers will receive. Those providers who have achieved $24,000 in allowable charges at the time of attestation can expect to receive their incentive payment within four to eight weeks through the same method as they currently receive Medicare reimbursements.

Medicaid EHR incentive programs are administered by the states and therefore details surrounding these programs vary by state. Each state will release its own details pertaining to incentive calculation and payment method. CMS has released a useful resource for state EHR incentive programs. Here you will find pertinent information for each state program as it is released.

Certified EMR Systems

Practice Fusion is certified as a Complete EMR. You can use Practice Fusion’s free EMR system alone to qualify for the complete 2011 incentive. For more information, please contact our team.

Applying for HITECH EHR Incentives

Providers can now register for the EHR Incentive Program through the CMS Registration website. The registration process is the first step to attest meaningful EHR use.

Our clinical team and policy experts are supplying users with updated information about how to qualify and apply for EHR stimulus funds. See the Practice Fusion presentation below for a detailed explanation of how to register.

When the time comes to submit an attestation to prove Meaningful Use, our support specialists will walk you through all stages of qualification. If you have any questions about Meaningful Use and what you can do to begin preparing, please let us know. We aim to make the EHR incentive process as easy as possible for our users.

Practice Fusion Makes Applying for EHR Stimulus Money Easy

Our goal is for Practice Fusion users to be able to run and submit Meaningful Use reports with the click of a button from within the EHR system. We also plan to create tools that clearly show your progress toward meeting the Meaningful Use criteria. Our web-based model uniquely positions Practice Fusion to create tools for you to run and send all essential reports straight from the application—even as the ONC criteria change. This is a significant advantage over other EMR systems which will likely require you to hire an IT contractor to come to your office and write and perform custom reports and conduct upgrades.

Can I Qualify for EMR Incentives?

Eligible medical professionals include Doctors of Medicine or Osteopathy (M.D. or D.O.), Dental Surgery or Medicine (D.D.S. or D.D.M.), Podiatric Medicine (D.P.M.), Optometry (O.D.) and Chiropractor (D.C.). Certified physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists, nurse-midwives, clinical social workers, clinical psychologists and dietitians also qualify.

Practice Fusion’s free EHR is ONC-ATCB 2011/2012 compliant and has been certified as a Complete EHR by Drummond Group, an ONC-ATCB approved to certify any complete or modular EHR both ambulatory and inpatient, in accordance with the applicable certification criteria adopted by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. This certification does not represent an endorsement by the Department of Health and Human Services or guarantee the receipt of incentive payments. Practice Fusion version 2.0 was Stage 1 certified on June 2, 2011. The ONC certification ID number is 06022011-9528-6. Clinical Quality Measures tested: NQF0013, NQF0024, NQF0028, NQF0038, NQF0041, NQF0055, NQF0056, NQF0061, NQF0421. Additional software used: Surescripts, RxHub, Email.