MEDITECH is reviewing the new definition of Meaningful Use and the associated Interim Final Rule for Meaningful Use standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria. Our initial reading shows no real surprises, but there are some new requirements outlined in the documents. These include: 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, specified vocabularies and interoperability protocols, as well as extended outcome reporting measures and self-attestation statements of Meaningful Use measurement criteria just to highlight a few. 

We would like to share several key points with our customers as we review these documents:

1) We feel confident our Advanced Clinical Systems already provide the vast majority of features required in the criteria, as was shown in the Client/Server Meaningful Use Criteria Product Map and MAGIC Meaningful Use Criteria Product Map we posted on meditech.com following the government's earlier iteration of the criteria. Our Development staff is reviewing the new documents in detail now to see what additional features may be needed (for example, recommended standard medical vocabularies) and investigating how we can best provide these requirements.

2) 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. Please check your release level and make appropriate arrangements for an update to 5.6 to ensure your system is live with a certified release during the year in which you plan to submit for stimulus payments.

3) 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 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. 

4.) There are new definitions related to payment structures which we will digest, organize, and publish for you.

We plan to update all of our ARRA related materials to provide you with more details frequently in the coming weeks, so please check meditech.com on a periodic basis.

Stay tuned.