Review Updated Information on Reporting Menu Objectives

(This is a repost of an email we received from CMS January 15, 2015)

CMS has released updated guidance on how elegible professionals should select menu objectives for the Medicare and Medicaid Electonic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs.  We encourage you to stay informed by taking a few minutes to review the information below.

Guidance on Reporting Menu Objectives

Elegible professionals participating in Stage 1 of the EHR Incentive Programs are required to report on a total of 5 meaningful use objectives from the menu set of 9 objectives.  When selecting five objectives from the menu set, eligible professionals must choose at least one option from the public health menu set.

If an eligible professional is able to meet the measure of one of the public health menu objectives but can be excluded from the other, the eligible professional should select and report on the public health menu objective he or she is able to meet.

If an elegible professional can be excluded from both public health menu objectives, the elegible professional may meet the menu requirement one of two ways:

1. Claim an exclusion from only one public health objective and report on four additional menu objectives from outside the public health menu set.
2. Report on five menu objectives from outside the public health menu set

Eligible professionals participating in Stage 2 are required to report 3 meaningful use objectives from the menu set of 6.

We encourage eligible professionals to select menu objectives that are relevant to their scope of practice, and claim an exclusion for a menu objective only in cases where there are no remaining menu objectives for which they qualify or if there are no remaining menu objectives that are relevant to their scope of practice.

For example, we hope that eligible professionals will report on 5 measures, if there are 5 measures that are relevant to their scope of practice and for which they can report data, even if they qualify for exclusions in the other objectives.

The Registration and Attestation System may prompt an eligible professional to report on additional measures if he or she claims an exclusion. This is because starting in 2014, the exclusion criteria will no longer count as reporting a meaningful use objective from the menu set. An eligible professional must meet the measure criteria for the objectives or report on all of the menu set objectives through a combination of meeting the exclusions and meeting the measures.

However, some eligible professionals who elect option 1 above may be asked to report on non-public health measures when they claim that exclusion in the Attestation System. These providers should document this issue for their records, and then claim the exclusion for the remaining measures in order to allow the system to accept their attestation.

For More Information
For more information, read the updated FAQ.

Disclaimer: AZCOMP Technologies, Inc, (AZCOMP) is providing this material as an informational reference for eligible professionals. Although every reasonable effort has been made to assure the accuracy of the information within these pages at the time of posting, the EHR Incentive program is constantly changing, and it is the responsibility of each provider to remain abreast of the EHR Incentive program requirements.