Public Health Menu Measures – Meaningful Use Monday

Lynn Scheps is Vice President, Government Affairs at EHR vendor SRSsoft. In this role, Lynn has been a Voice of Physicians and SRSsoft users in Washington during the formulation of the meaningful use criteria. Lynn is currently working to assist SRSsoft users interested in showing meaningful use and receiving the EHR incentive money. Check out Lynn’s previous Meaningful Use Monday posts.

When selecting the 5 meaningful use menu measures on which to report—from the list of 10 possibilities—the only constraint is that the EP must include at least one of the two measures from the “public health” category:

• Perform a test of the EHR’s capacity to submit electronic data to immunization registries
• Perform a test of the EHR’s capacity to report electronic syndromic surveillance data to public health agencies.

 These two measures have a number of things in common:

• EPs report by attesting that “Yes” a test was performed. There is no numerator and denominator to report and consequently no thresholds to meet.
• One test is sufficient for a group of providers that share a certified EHR in the same setting – it is not necessary for each EP to conduct a test individually.
• The test does not have to be successful to meet the measure.
• If the test is successful, then the EPs should continue to report on a regular basis.

 Both measures allow EPs to claim an exclusion under specified circumstances:

• Immunizations Measure:  The EP does not perform immunizations OR none of the immunization registries to which he/she would submit the information are able to receive the information electronically.
• Syndromic Surveillance Measure: The EP does not collect any reportable information OR there is no public health agency that is able to receive the information electronically.

 The potential to exclude these measures has resulted in some confusion about which—and how many—of these measures to report. The next Meaningful Use Monday post will offer some guidance on this issue.