Opinion: Certification regs complicate MU program

Of the three tenets of meaningful use -- adopt certified electronic health record technology, demonstrate core and menu set requirements, and report on clinical quality measures -- the piece about adopting certified EHRs is more complicated than most healthcare providers anticipated. For starters, the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT clarified in December 2010 that healthcare providers must possess all of the meaningful use capabilities, not just those that they intend to report on. This means that even though CMS has afforded healthcare providers the flexibility in reporting on any five of the 10 menu requirements in addition to all the core requirements, ONC requires those providers to possess all the core set and the 10 menu set capabilities. In essence, healthcare providers are being forced to possess capabilities that they do not intend to use and report on in Stage 1.