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The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, designated $19 billion for providers who can demonstrate “meaningful use” of certified Electronic Health Records (EHR). This month, the David Lawrence Centers is very proud of the fact that the Center will be one of the first community mental health centers in the state of Florida submitting the data required to receive the federal incentive payment.

The Center was already well positioned to receive the incentive because the agency had previously implemented an innovative electronic medical records system in 2005 with an established national certified vendor and an e-prescribe system in 2011. This sped up the implementation process required to demonstrate meaningful use considerably.

Incentive payments are made through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) and range from $44,000 – $63,750 over a five or six year period for each eligible provider within an agency. David Lawrence Centers currently has ten eligible providers for a possibility of $488,000 in incentive payments over a six year period.

In order to qualify, DLC had to demonstrate and meet meaningful use criteria which is designed to enable significant and measurable improvements in population health through a transformed health care delivery system. The vision of the meaningful use criteria is to have all patients fully engaged in their healthcare, ensure all providers have real-time access to all medical information and the tools necessary to ensure the quality and safety of the care provided while also affording improved access and elimination of health care disparities.

Meeting the meaningful use criteria requires eligible providers to meet fourteen core objectives, five menu objectives, and six clinical quality measures in Stage I. To date, the Center has registered all providers, worked with the software vendor to meet the criteria and will complete the required 90 day reporting period on July 19th.

David Schimmel CEO, states “We are very proud of the expertise and knowledge of our Clinical Records and Information Technology Department Staff who provided excellent leadership in our efforts to receive this incentive. Meeting the meaningful use criteria required months of hard work and involved team members from Executive Management, Medical and Clinical Team Members and Quality Assurance who worked tirelessly to evaluate our workflow and implement the required changes.”