Dermatology World June 2011 : Page 36
Certification MEANINGFUL CERTIFICATION AND MEANINGFUL USE DEFINED The nancial incentives o ered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for practices that meet requirements for the “meaningful use” of EHR systems require physicians to adopt an EHR system certi ed for meaningful use and utilize it to meet a set of CMS-de ned objectives for an extended period. These meaningful use objectives are the baseline requirements that practices must meet to qualify for incentive payments. (A list of the 15 required objectives and a menu from which meaningful users must select ve more objectives to complete is available at www. aad.org/hitkit.) For physicians who decide to commit to EHR in 2011 or 2012, these payments can total $44,000 over ve years if you participate with Medicare, or up to $63,750 over six years if you participate with Medicaid. This potential nancial incentive, according to practice management consultant Margret Amatayakul, underscores the importance of meaningful use certi cation. EHR systems that can be used to earn meaningful use incentives receive certi cation from an Authorized Testing and Certi cation Body approved by the O ce of the National Coordinator and are designated by an ONC-ATCB seal (see sidebar, p. 38). However, not all products certi ed for meaningful use are necessarily the optimal choice for dermatology practices. “I think the most important thing for dermatologists is to be sure the products they are looking at are both certi ed for meaningful use and meet the criteria [that ensure they will be useful for dermatologists],” Amatayakul said. (See sidebar below for a list of criteria to consider.) “Just because a product is certi ed for meaningful use doesn’t mean it incorporates every function that may be desired,” she said “In fact, the government acknowledges this in the preamble to the regulations.” One way to assess whether a product is useful for dermatologists is to look for dermatology-speci c certi cation from the Certi cation Committee for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT). As recently as 2010 CCHIT was the only body certifying EHR systems and well-known in the industry for CONTINUED on p. 38 CHECKLIST OF FEATURES Before approaching a vendor, it’s important to consider the features that best serve one’s practice. Many Academy mem-bers participated in the development of the CCHIT criteria for dermatology-specific certification, the only dermatology-specific certification on the market. These features include: The ability to capture the characteristics of a lesion as discrete data fields, including color, size, shape, arrange-ment, distribution, type, scale, and signs. The ability to annotate body diagrams and photos with text, as well as the ability to draw on them. The ability to create a log with statuses of dermatologic specimens removed — from the time of the removal through final action by the dermatologist — without duplicate entry. Free-hand diagrams for each patient encounter. The ability to compare two photos on one screen. A library of cutaneous anatomic diagrams to select from. Exportation of Maintenance of Certification data. Amatayakul and Drs. Siegel and Kaufmann also recommended that dermatologists evaluate systems based on the following criteria: Inventory management E&M coding assistance Billing and scheduling interface Tablet-enabled Integrated e-prescribing Automatic refill requests Medication history Clinical charting Drug and allergy alerts Electronic billing Lab orders, results, history, and management Surgical templates 36 DERMATOLOGY WORLD // June 2011 www.aad.org
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