Meaningful Use Assurance - Sophrona has you covered.
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Electronic patient data access assurance is what Sophrona
provides through its expertise in online patient communication and patient portal
technology. If you are looking for a solution that ensures you
have an easy path to meeting several patient communication requirements
related
Meaningful Use, look no further. Using our Sage Bridge
interface engine, our portal will compliment your electronic medical
record system (EMR or EHR) to ensure you easily, consistently, and with traceability
meet the following requirements for ARRA EHR incentive payments.
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Congratulations to our latest recipient of Meaningful Use
Funds!
Read Story
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Certified EHR Technology is Not Enough!
In order to qualify for EHR
Incentive stimulus dollars you need a certified EHR, but just as
importantly, you need to meet the Meaningful Use objective measures.
This is the difference between having the right
technology and actually being a meaningful user. Rather than fool around with interrupted work flows involving printers,
stocking paper, and printing various pieces of patient communication,
consider how Sophrona's ophthalmology-specific patient portal can help.
Never mind how you would even begin to track print-based metrics.
Of the 15 required core
meaningful use requirements and the 10 menu requirements - many
pertain to providing patients and other doctors with electronic patient
data. While many don't require the data be electronic in Stage 1, they
are all best addressed by a patient portal. Sophrona will
make it much easier to meet 3 core objectives and 4 menu objectives.
An example: How will you provide 50% of
your patients with an office visit summary?
Take the requirement that you provide
50% of your patients with an office visit summary within 3 days of the
patient's visit. Suppose your EHR is certified and you can print
off the summary - now what? If the average ophthalmologist sees
40-50 patients a day, you will be printing 20 summaries every day or
some 400 per month.
How do you avoid a slow down? Where will you put the printer? Who will
be responsible for printing and then tracking that the printed paper was
given to the patient?
Instead, don't do anything differently.
Sophrona will automatically email or mail the office visit summary to
patients every day - straight from your EHR. You can do this for 100% of
your patients if you like. Sophrona tracks everything and you don't have
to slow down or change your workflow.
Sophrona makes it operationally easy to meet 3 core objectives and
4 menu objectives.
Core Set Objectives & Measures where Sophrona Assures Success
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Objective |
Measure |
Implementation Comment |
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Provide patients with an electronic copy of their health
information (including diagnostic test results, problem list,
medication lists, medication allergies), upon request. |
More than 50% of all requesting patients receive
an electronic copy of their health information within 3 business days. |
Patient provides email address and requests a secure access code and is issued one. They
access the portal and pull up their current health information
along with any clinic office visit summary. |
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Provide clinical summaries for patients for each office visit.
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Clinical summaries provided to patients for more than 50% of all
office visits within 3 business days |
While this requirement can be addressed via paper copies, the
cost effective solution is to give an electronic copy to
patients who want one. Make sure you have an email address
on file when you close the chart if the patient wants an
electronic copy. Data is pulled on a daily basis from your
certified EHR and a notification email with a secure token is
sent to the patient giving them access to their clinical
summary. |
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Capability to exchange key clinical information (for example,
problem list, medication list, medication allergies, diagnostic
test results), among providers of care and patient authorized
entities electronically.
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Performed at least one test of certified EHR technology's
capacity to electronically exchange key clinical information. |
Your certified EHR will be able to generate the
properly formatted data file, but it is Sophrona's Referral
Manager that will allow you to share this data with a referring
doctor or specialist. |
Menu Set Objectives & Measures where Sophrona Assures Success
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Objective |
Measure |
Implementation Comment |
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Send reminders to patients per patient preference for
preventive/ follow up care.
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More than 20% of all unique patients 65 years or older or 5
years old or younger were sent an appropriate reminder during
the EHR reporting period. |
Define a recall protocol for the patient from the chart or at
checkout and get their email if they want an electronic
version. The rest is automatic resulting in a mailed
letter or email to the patient. |
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Provide patients with timely electronic access to their health
information (including lab results, problem list, medication
lists, medication allergies) within four business days of the
information being available to the doctor. |
More than 10% of all unique patients are provided electronic access
to their health information within four business days of being
updated in the certified EHR. |
Patient requests a secure access code and is issued one. They
access the portal and pull up their current health information
along with any clinic office visit summary. Email notification
of change may be included. |
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Use certified EHR technology to identify patient-specific
education resources and provide those resources to the patient
if appropriate.
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More than 10% of all unique patients are provided patient-specific
education resources |
Data pulled daily from certified EHR provides
ICD-9s for the patient. Email link or mailed letter is
sent to patient with appropriate ICD-9 driven educational
material. |
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The EP, eligible hospital or CAH who transitions their patient
to another setting of care or provider of care or refers their
patient to another provider of care should provide summary of
care record for each transition of care or referral. |
Provide
as summary of care record for more than 50% of transitions of
care and referrals |
Your certified EHR will be able to generate the
properly formatted data file, but it is Sophrona's Referral
Manager that will allow you to share this data with a referring
doctor or specialist. |
Sophrona Meaningful Use Module (MUM) in a Nutshell
In essence, Sophrona's meaningful use solution helps with the following types of patient communication through
electronic (email notice + authentication and portal display) or regular mail.
- eRecall - Provide health maintenance reminders.
- ViewChart - Provide patients with copies of their
medical information: test
results, problem list, medications, allergies.
- ViewChart - Provide patients with copies of office
visit clinic summaries.
- eEducation Delivery - Provide
patients with patient-specific educational materials.
It also helps with provider to provider communication:
- Share patient information with third-party providers
such as specialists and referring doctors.
Common Questions
What is "meaningful use"?
"Meaningful use" is the moniker coined by Centers for Medicare &
Medicaid Services (CMS) to define how healthcare providers are to use EHR technology to receive ARRA incentive payments.
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According to the
Health
and Human Services Health Information Technology website:
Overview
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery
Act) authorizes the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to
provide reimbursement incentives for eligible professionals and
hospitals who are successful in becoming “meaningful users” of certified
electronic health record (EHR) technology. The Medicare EHR incentive
program will provide incentive payments to eligible professionals (EPs),
eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals (CAHs) that are
meaningful users of certified EHR technology. The Medicaid EHR incentive
program will provide incentive payments to eligible professionals and
hospitals for efforts to adopt, implement, or upgrade certified EHR
technology or for meaningful use in the first year of their
participation in the program and for demonstrating meaningful use during
each of five subsequent years.
Final Rule
On July 13th, HHS and the Office of the
National Coordinator (ONC) released their "Final
Rule"
to implement provisions of the Recovery Act that provide incentive
payments for the meaningful use of certified EHR technology. The
final rule defines the requirements of the EHR incentive programs,
including defining the central concept of “meaningful use” of EHR
technology.
Read more details about meaningful use
on the
HHS Health Information Technology
website. |
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Will this change the existing Sophrona portal functions you have?
No, meeting meaningful use requirements will involve the addition of
new portal functions, but little not change existing functions. Sophrona will continue to deliver innovative solutions for online patient communication while meeting Meaningful Use requirements
as well. Patients will continue to be able to register, schedule, pay bills, reorder contacts lenses, exchange secure messages and interact with your practice and doctors in other ways through our online portal technology.
How does this affect me if I already use Sophrona's portal technology but
don't yet have an EMR?
We will be happy to work closely with you during your EMR selection
and implementation process to ensure you are able to meet your target
dates for meaningful use. Your practice will be able to continue using our
patient portal technology with your new EMR, but appropriate Sage Bridge
interfaces will need to be planned for and implemented. In your EMR
quest, make sure you look at Medflow.
They are Sophrona's strategic partners for a reason: ophthalmology-focus and
leadership in the field.
Our practice is selecting an EMR, but we want to make sure we have an
ophthalmology-specific portal. How can Sophrona help?
Sophrona can provide you with the best of both worlds. Choose the
ideal EMR for your practice and you can implement our ophthalmology
specific patient portal at the same time. In your EMR quest, make
sure you look at Medflow.
They are our strategic partner for a reason: ophthalmology-focus and
industry leadership.
Where can our practice learn more about Meaningful Use?
The
Health
and Human Services Health Information Technology website is a great
resource.
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