What is Meaningful Use?

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provide financial incentives to encourage the adoption and Meaningful Use of certified EHR technology (CEHRT). Providers eligible for the CMS EHR Incentive Programs can earn up to $44,000 (under the Medicare EHR Incentive Program) or $63,750 (under the Medicaid EHR Incentive Program) by successfully meeting a set of objectives and measures developed and published by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). As of today, there are published “final rules”—one for Stage 1 and another for Stage 2 Meaningful Use.

Meaningful use (MU) defines minimum U.S. government standards for using electronic health records (EHR) and for exchanging patient clinical data between healthcare providers, insurers, and patients. The Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs provide financial incentives to healthcare providers for the “meaningful use” of certified EHR technology. To receive an EHR incentive payment, providers have to meet certain measurement thresholds that range from recording patient information as structured data to exchanging summary care records.

CMS has established certain rules for evaluating these thresholds for eligible professionals, eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals (CAHs). These rules, known as meaningful use measures or meaningful use criteria, determine whether or not a healthcare provider may receive federal funds from the Medicare EHR Incentive Program, the Medicaid EHR Incentive Program or both.

Meaningful use is divided into three stages.

• Stage 1: Began in 2010 and focused on promoting adoption of EHRs.
• Stage 2: Finalized in late 2012. Increases thresholds of criteria compliance and introduces more clinical decision support, care-coordination requirements and rudimentary patient engagement rules.
• Stage 3: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) rule makers are writing this from late 2014 through early-to-mid 2016. It will focus on robust health information exchange as well as other more fully formed meaningful use guidelines introduced in earlier stages.