You must meet meaningful use measures and report them to CMS – unless you’re participating in the Medicaid Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program, like Cambridge Pediatrics. The practice, which implemented an EHR system by eClinicalWorks, found that its five physicians were already meeting some measures. Check out a full-color screenshot of this meaningful use “dashboard," complete with analysis.

You don’t have to implement electronic health record (EHR) systems alone – how many physician practices have a computer expert, a hardware expert and an EHR expert ready to advise them? Very few, which is why the government set aside hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money to regional extension centers (RECs).

Your Medicare claims could be used to establish whether or not you deliver adequate care to your patients if CMS finalizes its June 8 proposed rule to allow your data to be extracted and used by qualified third parties. The rule aims to set requirements regarding how your Medicare data is used to measure your performance without violating patient privacy, CMS states.

The fastest-growing drug codes from 2008 to 2009 encompass a wide variety of clinical conditions, quite different from the type of growth seen from 2007 to 2008. While in both cases unspecified drugs outpace all others in terms of percentage increase in utilization, the newer data shows significant growth in drugs for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and high blood pressure.

If a patient is presenting to the office for a visit with the physician and during the visit the physician determines the patient would benefit from the administration of two medications, such as Decadron and Rocephin, would it be appropriate to bill the E/M and the drug administration code twice?