By Mika Doyle

It seems that 2011 was the year of “meaningful use” – and for good reason. EMR vendors had to scramble to meet certification criteria for the EHR Incentive Programs, and urgent care practitioners had to scramble to learn how to be meaningful users of their EMRs in order to qualify for incentive payments. And at the center of it all was tens of thousands of dollars per physician in incentive payments from the government.

As we head into 2012, however, we can’t just put meaningful use behind us.

The Good News
If you thought your chances of getting full meaningful use stimulus dollars – up to $44,000 per physician for the Medicare program – ended with the ringing in of the New Year, think again. Physicians who begin participating in the program in 2012 are still eligible to receive full incentive payments – up to 75 percent of their Medicare allowable charges, subject to the maximum payments outlined in the table below:

Source: CMS.gov/EHRIncentivePrograms

But don’t wait too long to participate in the program. Like any government program, there’s a process you must go through that you won’t want to leave until the last minute. Remember: the program is about the “meaningful use” of an EMR, so you don’t qualify by just using an EMR; you have to prove you are using the EMR in a meaningful way based on criteria set by the government.

What does “meaningful use” mean? The idea is that accelerating the use of EMRs will result in healthcare that is focused on evidence-based preventative care through the use of electronic health technology. The government is committed to accelerating the transition from paper to electronic, and health experts expect tangible changes in the U.S. healthcare system to manifest as early as this year as a result of meaningful use.

“The next 12 months will undoubtedly be a time of even greater transformation for the healthcare sector as deadlines inch closer for meaningful use requirements,” said Emily Mullins, healthcare reporter for EHR Outlook and Dorland Health.

The Bad News
Are you a physician who is eligible for the Medicare EHR Incentive Program? Unless you meet all of the exemptions to the meaningful use criteria, you MUST become a meaningful user of an EMR by 2015. Failure to do so will result in payment adjustments to your Medicare reimbursements that start at 1% each year, up to a maximum of a 5% annual adjustment.

Mika Doyle is communications coordinator for Practice Velocity, LLC, the leading provider of software solutions for urgent care practices.