MEDITECH continues to review the government's December 30, 2009 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) and Interim Final Rule (IFR) which outlines the initial set of standards, implementation specifications, and certification for demonstrating Meaningful Use. As we noted earlier, there are some new requirements outlined in the documents. These include among other changes: clearer definitions for eligible hospitals and providers, a 90 day live period for 10% utilization of CPOE, the rescheduling of order sets from 2013 to 2011, five clinical decision support rules in 2011 instead of one, and specified vocabularies and interoperability protocols, as well as extended outcome reporting measures and self-attestation statements of Meaningful Use measurement criteria.

We have posted our MAGIC and Client/Server Product Road Maps, which we will continue to expand in the weeks ahead. These draft road maps identify the:

• Care goals
• Stage 1 objectives and measures
• Government calculations for measuring Meaningful Use
• Adopted content exchange and vocabulary standards
• MEDITECH or partner applications needed
• Strategies for deploying the needed functionality
• Relevant Data Repository fields for reporting Meaningful Use.

You will see when you review these road maps, our Advanced Clinical Systems already provide the vast majority of features required in the criteria.

MEDITECH is committed to becoming a certified vendor at the earliest possible date. Our plans include re-certification of the 5.6 MAGIC and Client/Server Releases, should that become necessary, as well as certification of 6.0. As soon as the certification plans and agencies are finalized by the Office of the National Coordinator, MEDITECH will evaluate all options and post an update in this section.

Customers interested in reviewing MEDITECH's design plans for addressing the Meaningful Use interoperability requirements can refer to our Sharing Electronic Health Records document in the ARRA Resources section of our EHR and Interoperability Initiatives portal. Likewise, customers may refer to our HIPAA/ARRA page on meditech.com to learn more regarding our design approach for addressing the privacy and security requirements.

We plan to update all of our ARRA-related materials periodically to provide you with more details frequently, so please check meditech.com on a periodic basis. Please contact your MEDITECH Sales Representative with any questions or e-mail our stimulus mailbox, and a member of our ARRA task force will respond.