Successfully attesting to meaningful use of electronic health records when attestation opened on April 18 was easy for MedCentral Health System, a two-hospital delivery system. The difficult part was getting registered for the meaningful use program in early January--a process that because of Medicare bureaucracy didn't actually finish until mid-March. "Get in the registration process early," advises Mike Mistretta, CIO. The problem? While MedCentral's Medicare contractor for a decade has accepted a certain document listing the delivery system's direct deposit routing and account numbers, the contractor that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is using to register for attestation would not accept the document. The registration contractor wanted a copy of a cancelled paper check for an electronic account. Obviously, electronic accounts don't use paper checks.
