The eligible professionals under the Medicare EHR incentive program, are; Doctor of medicine or osteopathy, Doctor of dental surgery or dental medicine, Doctor of podiatry, Doctor of optometry, and Chiropractor. Likewise, the Medicaid EHR incentive eligible professionals are; physicians, nurse practitioners, certified nurse-midwives, dentists, and physician assistants (CMS, 2014). The requirements for eligibility are that EPs must have either a minimum of 30% Medicare patient volume, have a minimum 20% Medicaid patient volume, or practice in a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) or Rural Health Center (RHC) (AHRQ, 2015), whereas, the eligible hospitals that come under the Medicaid EHR Incentive Program are the acute care hospitals with at least 10% Medicaid patient volume and children`s hospital which requires no Medicaid patient volume requirements (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services [CMS], 2012). Eligible hospitals for Medicaid EHR program include acute care hospitals, CAH, and cancer hospitals with a minimum of ten percent Medicaid patient volume (yearly) and children’s …show more content…
Department of Health & Human Services [HHS.gov], 2015). The programmatic goals of the HITECH Act include advancing patient care by making the EHR patient-centered through a secure, nationwide health information network (Hebda & Czar, 2013). The other objectives of HITECH include: engaging patients and family in the health care, creating transparency and efficiency, and maintaining privacy and security of patient health information. The Stage 2 of MU also focuses on more rigorous health information exchange and transmission of patient care summaries electronically across multiple health care setting. The ultimate aim of both of these programs is to improve quality and efficiency of patient care by maintaining privacy, with the use of EHR. Hence, it is clear that the successful implementation of stage 2 will help in fulfilling the programmatic goals of