Meaningful Use is a U.S. government-mandated program whose goal is to raise the quality of health care, while reducing its cost, by encouraging providers to use electronic health records (EHRs). Many providers have already reaped the financial reward for achieving Meaningful Use Stage 1 and are now working toward achieving Stage 2 Meaningful Use and collecting the Medicare incentive payment for that level. Come 2015, providers will begin to suffer financial penalties if not “meaningfully using” an EHR.

For practices that work with sophisticated EHR systems, achieving Meaningful Use can be easier than for those practices either starting from scratch technologically (coming from paper charts), or using an unsatisfactory EHR. As practices work toward achieving Meaningful Use Stage 2, which demands that caregivers use EHRs more often and in more comprehensive ways, having the right EHR will become increasingly more important.

While Meaningful Use Stage 1 had challenging measures and reporting thresholds in many areas, Stage 2 asks for more. For example, here are just 5 of the 17 core objectives that must be met:

• Use computerized provider order entry (CPOE) for more than 60% of medication orders (up from 30% in Stage 1) and for more than 30% of laboratory and radiology orders.

• Transmit at least 50% of prescriptions electronically (up from 40% in Stage 1) using certified EHR technology.

• Generate at least one report listing patients by specific conditions to use for quality improvement, reduction of disparities, research, or outreach.

• Provide a summary of care record for more than 50% of transitions of care or referrals, and demonstrate the ability to send summary records electronically according to CMS guidelines.

• Demonstrate ongoing successful transmission of immunization data from the certified EHR to an immunization registry or immunization information system.

To learn more about achieving Meaningful Use, see our Meaningful Use Knowledge Hub.