ARRA and Meaningful Use: Is Your Organization Ready?(Trends‪)‬

On the eve of this new year, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a just-in-time and greatly anticipated announcement of the regulations required to implement health information technology (HIT) as stated in the provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the proposed rules for the standards, implementation specifications and certification criteria, outlining meaningful use (MU) for Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record (EHR) incentive programs. The proposed regulations have since been published in the Federal Register under EHR Incentive Program (CMS-0033-P) and list the objectives and measures a healthcare organization (HCO) must meet to achieve MU in three stages. One recently released regulation is the process for EHR certification.