New Stimulus Legislation

To summarize, the new law states that recipients of the $44,000 Medicare incentive must be eligible professionals (i.e. MD, DO, DDS, DDM, DPM, or OD) and use a certified EMR in a meaningful way. gloStream is certified and gloEMR in its current design allows its doctors to rise to the level of meaningful use as defined in the law.

The certification process is now done under the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology. That may change, and it may not. The bottom line is that today, gloStream does all the things that the new law says it wants an EMR to do.

As for how doctors demonstrate meaningful use to Medicare in order to get stimulus funds, the law identifies several possible mechanisms, including:

• An attestation (witness statement)
• Submission of claims with appropriate coding (such as a code indicating that the patient was seen using a certified EHR)
• A survey response
• A report
• Other means specified by the Secretary of HHS

President Obama just named Dr. David Blumental to the Office of National Coordinator, which is under HHS and will make the ultimate decision as to how you are to demonstrate meaningful use to CMS. However, they want you to do it, so please rest assured that gloEMR will let you. The underlying architecture of our system is very flexible. So, if something needs to be changed to meet a particular government standard, it's no big deal. We do this every year already to prepare for CCHIT certification.