Stage 2 MU Certification

tmccormi wrote on Thursday, August 30, 2012:

The eagerly anticipated Final Rule related to Stage 2 Meaningful Use was released on August 23rd and will be published in the Federal Register on September 4th.

Tony
www.mi-squared.com / @tonymi2
oemr.org / @OEMR_org

bradymiller wrote on Monday, September 10, 2012:

Hi,

Read through the final ONC criteria and set up a project page(s) for the Stage 2 project:
http://open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/OpenEMR_Certification_Stage_II_Meaningful_Use

There are 45 criteria, so the barometer(s) require a rather wide screen… Things I was initially interested in were the optional criteria and also whether they were unchanged/revised/new criteria since stage 1 (so, I made barometers for just these to quickly visualize this). Also mad a page with each criteria, which has the ONC requirements and pertinent links (such as pertinent pages from stage 1 project).

Hopefully this page(s) will help to kick start things. As always, feel free to modify/update these pages.

-brady
OpenEMR

bradymiller wrote on Tuesday, September 11, 2012:

Hi,

Here’s a free service that will be important for stage 2 patient education stuff:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/connect/overview.html

-brady
OpenEMR

tmccormi wrote on Wednesday, September 12, 2012:

That’s what we use already in Stage one (as an option).
-Tony

bradymiller wrote on Thursday, September 13, 2012:

Hi Tony,

I think it’s a bit different. My above post actually sparked the interest of somebody whom is working with Medline Plus Connect and sent the below email to me:

This message might be a little bit random, but bear with me.  I work for the National
Library of Medicine as a Technology Coordinator and I am currently working to inform
people about MedlinePlus Connect and help them set it up in their EHR and/or Patient
Portal.  Due to the way our organization is set up and because MedlinePlus Connect is
free/doesn\t require registration, I haven’t seen an active instance of it. 

I came across one of your postings in the OpenEMR forum (I have set up the OpenEMR
appliance  on my machine and am trying to learn more about it) and saw that you
mentioned using Connect as a way of achieving Stage 2 Meaningful Use.  I'm curious if
this means that you are actively running the web service or web application?  And if so, if
you’d be willing to chat with me a bit about your experience setting it up.

Here was my reply:

The current implementation in OpenEMR for ‘Patient Education’ can be found in
OpenEMR in the left menu at Miscellaneous->Patient Education. Note, we have several
options, Medline, eMEdicine and WebMD which basically just work by sending the
search term(s) to the search engine of these web sites(ie web applications). Although
we are already using Medline as you’ll note in the address created we go through the
vivisimo search rather than your Medline Plus Connect web application/service. This is
enough to fulfill stage I MU.

For stage 2, placed the ONC criteria here:
http://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/Patient-specific_education_resources_(MU2)
It appears will need to electronically identify the patient education material by diagnosis,
meds, labs of a patient, which your Connect engine can be used for since can search for
ICD/rxnorm/loinc etc. So, will likely utilize this within OpenEMR for stage 2. How it actually
gets implemented will likely not be decided until the NIST certificiation criteria come out
for ‘Patient-specific education resources’ criteria and how it gets recorded for it’s
accompanying AMC measures; since the NIST cert criteria are the practical things that
much be done, hard to come up with a solution until see those.

Again, depending on the NIST criteria, hopefully the web application to Connect will
suffice (since it's much easier to open a browser window than parse service data and
display it). But will need to wait before making the decision of whether to go with the web
application vs service method of Connect until then.

I hope this explains things well.

Pretty cool to see that their service is having a very similar problem to the OpenEMR project (inability to track if and how many users are using it).

-brady
OpenEMR

bradymiller wrote on Thursday, January 17, 2013:

Hi,

Here’s the updated project page and completion barometer (note that items are beginning to change colors :slight_smile: ):
http://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/OpenEMR_Certification_Stage_II_Meaningful_Use

To help with planning, does anybody know what the drop dead due date is for us to have the certification to ensure users get Meaningful Use?

thanks,
-brady
OpenEMR

yehster wrote on Thursday, January 17, 2013:

To help with planning, does anybody know what the drop dead due date is for us to have the certification to ensure users get Meaningful Use?

There is no thing as a “drop dead due date” in this regard.

http://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Legislation/EHRIncentivePrograms/Stage_2.html
The earliest someone could take advantage of MU2 certification would be January 1 of 2014, but for 2014, the user needs to demonstrate only 90 days of use(instead of a full year), so they could still get their MU2 incentive if they started in the 4th quarter of 2014.
But if OpenEMR still isn’t certified by that point, users can still attest in 2015 or later and still receive incentive payments.

bradymiller wrote on Thursday, January 17, 2013:

Hi,

Thanks for the useful link yehster.

Then wouldn’t the drop dead due date be before the 4th quarter of 2014? (this deadline would be required for users that need to attest in 2014 whom starting attesting for MU with OpenEMR in 2011 or 2012)?

thanks,
-brady
OpenEMR

mcaloon wrote on Saturday, February 23, 2013:

Hello,
   The ONC sponsors the MITRE Corporation (a FFRC - federally funded research center) and they’ve built Cypress which is an EMR vendor certification platform which supports MU2 certification. I have the Cypress 2.0 system running on my server and would like to know if any community members are interested in collaborating in the openEMR certification for MU2. Please post your interests here. I may have a sponsorship in the works for this effort but am basically looking for partners to work with on this project.

Mac

juggernautsei wrote on Saturday, February 23, 2013:

Mac,

We would be willing to partner with you. We are a group of three developers that would like to lend a hand or three.

Sherwin

bradymiller wrote on Monday, February 25, 2013:

Hi Mac,

For clarification, what MU2 items/projects do you plan on specifically working on?

thanks,
-brady
OpenEMR

visolveemr wrote on Monday, February 25, 2013:

Brady,
Not sure of the idea Mac has.
Basically, Cypress tool is used to test clinical quality measures and it is official testing tool for stage 2 meaningful use certification supported by ONC.

Thanks,
ViSolve MUO consulting team
services@visolve.com

tmccormi wrote on Saturday, September 21, 2013:

More information that anyone is likely to want to know about Stage 2 …

http://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Legislation/EHRIncentivePrograms/EducationalMaterials.html
–Tony

bradymiller wrote on Sunday, September 22, 2013:

Hi,

Guessing the due dates are still the same. If so, we are getting close to panic time in the next several months. Still likely 6-12 months of work to do:
http://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/OpenEMR_Certification_Stage_II_Meaningful_Use#Overview

-brady
OpenEMR

tmccormi wrote on Friday, November 08, 2013:

Reminder to ALL users and Vendors and Contributors.

We need about $25,000 to do the QA/Testing and the actual Certification Tests.

We could use anything above that to accelerate development by allowing OEMR (501c3) to pay contractors rather that bend their arms for volunteer work.

If we had $100K it would be like a dream come true, but any amount would make things go faster and more reliably.

Volunteers willing to help raise the funds would be useful. Direct donations to OEMR.org for that purpose would also be useful.

There are Donation links on the open-emr.org and oemr.org pages.

Thanks
Tony McCormick
OEMR President

tmccormi wrote on Tuesday, November 12, 2013:

Amazing… no feed back what so ever on raising the funds needed to keep this project alive, really folks.

This is important. Even if all the development is contributed we have to Pay for the certification tests.

–Tony

mdsupport wrote on Tuesday, November 12, 2013:

While we do our part, it would be nice to let all ‘users’ know about this. It is doubtful that all physicians regularly check this forum or are even aware of this discussion.

Can oemr.org provide a good status update letter/email that can be redistributed by all commercial as well as other support providers to their customer base? The communication should be targeted to the physician/owners and explain that their next $10K payment is dependent on timely completion of this step. Many commercial EMRs are already on their way to full certification and their users have already paid for it one way or other. For OEMR users a small down payment of $500 or $1,000 paid directly to oemr.org is a good business expense for 2013. The support providers should make it clear that they are not asking any funds for themselves but relaying the communication in the greater interest of everyone. Most importantly, the physician/owners/practice managers need to get at least couple of phone calls to follow up the letters/emails.

Separately, non-US users also indirectly benefit from MU1 and MU2 enhancements. For example, it is doubtful if there would have ever been such a push to implement the rules engine without the requirement from MU. MU2 is going to make even more features available for all users. So a one time payment of $100 or so towards this task would help them as well.

tmccormi wrote on Tuesday, November 12, 2013:

That’s a good idea. I’ll work on that or perhaps Art or Jack could?
–Tony

Tony McCormick, CTO
Medical Information Integration, LLC

Direct: 713-574-6709, cell 503-330-2239
Office: 866-735-0897
@MI2_OpenEMR

On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 12:13 PM, MD Support mdsupport@users.sf.net wrote:

While we do our part, it would be nice to let all ‘users’ know about this.
It is doubtful that all physicians regularly check this forum or are even
aware of this discussion.

Can oemr.org provide a good status update letter/email that can be
redistributed by all commercial as well as other support providers to their
customer base? The communication should be targeted to the physician/owners
and explain that their next $10K payment is dependent on timely completion
of this step. Many commercial EMRs are already on their way to full
certification and their users have already paid for it one way or other.
For OEMR users a small down payment of $500 or $1,000 paid directly to
oemr.org is a good business expense for 2013. The support providers
should make it clear that they are not asking any funds for themselves but
relaying the communication in the greater interest of everyone. Most
importantly, the physician/owners/practice managers need to get at least
couple of phone calls to follow up the letters/emails.

Separately, non-US users also indirectly benefit from MU1 and MU2
enhancements. For example, it is doubtful if there would have ever been
such a push to implement the rules engine without the requirement from MU.
MU2 is going to make even more features available for all users. So a one
time payment of $100 or so towards this task would help them as well.

Stage 2 MU Certificationhttps://sourceforge.net/p/openemr/discussion/202506/thread/9498ca0e/?limit=25#9d19

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fsgl wrote on Tuesday, November 12, 2013:

How about devoting a bit of the homepage temporarily to a special section soliciting funds for MU 2? It is a high profile area. Is it necessary to outsource this endeavor? Would there not be more funds left over if there are no intemediaries? Twitter devotees may not mind if there are 2 instead of 5 links.

It’s not that difficult to write a little blurb about why a donation is in one’s own self interest. People are more likely to donate if there is a specific reason, especially if it will benefit themselves as well as the organization.

The orange button is already there. It can be copied, (perhaps in different color to avoid confusion), further down the page, with the text for the appeal. Some of the practices which have earned the incentive in 2011 or 2012 are probably more amenable to donating.

Most of us planning to attest for 2013 are still tying up loose ends. It is very clear that work on 2014 certification needs to begin soon, but our minds are still stuck on 2013. It’s not apathy but a matter of priority for medical practices.

jcahn2 wrote on Tuesday, November 12, 2013:

What, me contribute something useful? What a concept. I’ll try to create something.