You've seen how demanding some of the proposed meaningful use rules are (see breakdown chart) and how little time there is to demonstrate meaningful use and earn your share of the incentive pie. Now the good news: The proposed meaningful use rule is so strict that there's almost no chance for the final rule to be more difficult. The final rule will either maintain the same requirements or water them down, experts tell Part B News.

If you want the electronic health record (EHR) stimulus money  - as much as $44,000 in extra Medicare payments or $63,750 in Medicaid bonus payments per physician - you have to demonstrate "meaningful use" of certified electronic health records (see story).

You would no longer face mandatory annual fraud, abuse and waste training in order to contract with Medicare Advantage plans under a CMS proposal to ditch the requirement. This training requirement, which went into effect Jan. 1, 2009, obligated MAs to conduct compliance training and education to contracted personnel, including physicians and their staff (PBN 2/23/09). Many providers complained that undergoing training from multiple MAs is burdensome and wasteful.

Download this month's tool, a Medication Chart, from the Part B News website, www.partbnews.com. This tool, developed by DecisionHealth Professional Services, will help you track your patient's prescriptions and over-the-counter medications or supplements. Print out this PDF, give it to your patients and have them fill it out before seeing the doctor.

Proposed meaningful use requirements by difficulty, part I. Look for the second part of our difficulty rankings in the next issue of Part B News. As always, you can read new stories at www.partbnews.com before they make the print issue.

Most practices that frequently bill E/M services to Medicare saw a decline in their E/M denial rates from 2007 to 2008, with the exceptions of emergency medicine and radiation oncology. NOTE: The percentages above the bars indicate the net yearly change.

Many practices had been led to believe that so long as their EHR was certified by the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT), it would be able to achieve meaningful use (PBN 1/11/10).

We still receive consult requests from physicians. Even though our doctors will report the appropriate E/M office code, can they report a higher level code to get paid for the extra work involved in preparing/sending a report to the first physician?

Correction: A chart in the Jan. 11, 2010 issue of Part B News listing the proposed meaningful use requirements for physicians was incomplete. There are a total of 25 meaningful use requirements, including a measure that eligible professionals (EPs) must "generate lists of patients by specific conditions to use for quality improvement, reduction of disparities and outreach." Providers could meet this measure by "generating at least one report listing patients of the EP with a specific condition." An updated, correct version of this chart appears in the online version of the article, available at www.partbnews.com.