Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records and ADPH
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) enacted the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act to accelerate the adoption of health information technology. The ARRA offers incentives to eligible providers and hospitals to adopt health information technology and use it in a “meaningful” way. Meaningful Use is defined in a specific way, requiring fifteen "core" and ten "menu" criteria. Of the ten menu options, three require reporting to public health:
- Submit electronic data to public health immunization registries/systems.
- Provide electronic submission of reportable lab results to public health agencies
- Provide electronic syndromic surveillance data to public health agencies
ADPH is working with providers, hospitals, and electronic health record (EHR) vendors to accept immunization data, electronic laboratory reports for notifiable diseases and conditions, and syndromic data in a meaningful manner to improve public health. ADPH will work with vendors and hospitals after they have obtained EHR certification. It is important providers select an EHR company that meets HL7 messaging standards and the federally mandated vocabulary standards for Immunizations, electronic lab reporting, and syndromic surveillance. ADPH accepts HL7 version 2.3.1 or 2.5.1.
In order for this process to be effective, the following steps need to occur:
- Vendors obtain EHR certification using the Office of National Coordinator’s (ONC) process.
- Vendors, hospitals, and providers register with ADPH on the Security Portal. First-time registers will need to do the following:
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- Select "New User" and complete the information
- Select the check box beside "ADPH Meaningful Use"
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and submit the information to ADPH
- Bookmark or save the link to the ADPH Security Portal for future access
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- ADPH will notify New Users with a user name and password via email.
- Enter this access information into the ADPH Security Portal to enter the ADPH Meaningful Use site. The Website will guide vendors and hospitals to organizational/ technical information and provide a way to exchange necessary documentation such as trading partner agreements, memoranda of understanding, and implementation guides.
- Vendors and hospitals will send test data to be validated.
- Once the message is validated by ADPH in the test environment, data may proceed to production.
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Certified EHR technology assures users that the EHR system or module offers the necessary technological capability, functionality, and security to meet Meaningful Use criteria. Certification also ensures that patient data may be shared with other systems confidentially. For more information about which EHR systems and modules are certified for the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs, visit The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Certification Programs.
For more information on how ADPH will work with EHRs, click on the following links:
Additional Resources
For more information from ADPH, send an email to MeaningfulUse@adph.state.al.us. |
