Meaningful Use Measures Reporting

 

The Meaningful Use Measures Reporting in this application is intended for practices that use an EHR system that is not integrated with the Updox Patient Portal (i.e. the EHR doesn't use the Updox API to pull the measure data into the EHR's measure calculations) but the EHR system does have functionality to sync patients with Updox.

 

 

MU Measures

Meaningful Use Measures are a requirement for participation in the Medicare and Medicaid Meaningful Use Incentive Program. The purpose of the measures is to evaluate a provider's performance in key areas.

A measure consists of a denominator and a numerator. The denominator is the "total" population during the reporting period (e.g. patients seen by the eligible provider). The numerator is the "subset" of that population that meets additional criteria (e.g. patients who received a secure message).

 

To calculate the Patient Portal related measures information is needed from both the EHR system and Updox. The EHR system has the information needed to calculate the denominator (e.g. which providers saw which patients when).  Updox has the information to calculate a "raw" numerator. It is considered a "raw" numerator since Updox doesn't have the denominator information to filter the results.

 

There are three MU measures associated with the Patient Portal:

 

Measure

Denominator

Numerator

MU Stage

  Patient Access

The number of patients seen by an eligible provider during the reporting period.

The number of patients in the denominator who are provided timely access to health information for every office visit to view online, download, and transmit to a third party. The timeliness limit depends on the payment incentive program the provider is reporting. For Meaningful Use (MU) Stage 2 and the Advancing Care Information category in MIPS for the transition year (ACI Transition), the deadline is within 4 business days of when the information became available to the provider. For MU Stage 3 and ACI, the deadline is reduced to within 48 hours.

 

In Updox, the patient is included if they have a portal account and have received a clinical record summary (CCD) from the practice within the reporting period. The practice will need to obtain information from their EHR system to determine if the CCD was sent for every office visit within the timeliness deadline.

Stage 1 and 2

  View, Download, Transmit

The number of patients seen by an eligible  provider during the reporting period.

The number of patients in the denominator who have viewed, downloaded, or transmitted to a 3rd party their health information during the reporting period.

 

In Updox, the patient is included if they have logged into the Patient Portal and viewed, downloaded, or transmitted a clinical record summary (CCD) in the reporting period.

Stage 2

  Secure Messaging

The number of patients seen by an eligible  provider during the reporting period.

Before 2015 - The number of patients in the denominator that sent a secure message from the Patient Portal to the provider.

 

2015 - Not a percentage- based measure in this year, instead the provider simply attests if Secure Messaging is enabled (Y/N).

 

After 2015 - The number of patients in the denominator who have received a secure message in the Patient Portal from a provider.

 

Stage 2

 

* Healthcare information refers to the Continuity of Care Document (CCD) that you create within your EHR system. It includes clinical info such as the patient's problems, medications, allergies, lab results, etc.

 

Do not use the Meaningful Use Measures Reporting within Updox if your EHR software is integrated with the Updox Patient Portal. You'll want to use your EHR's reporting instead.

 

In the annual MU Attestation for each provider, do not use the values directly from the Updox reports. There are additional steps to calculate the measures.

 

These values are considered "raw" numerators since additional information is needed from your EHR system to completely calculate the measure (i.e. which patients did each provider see during the reporting period).