Falcon Physician certified for Meaningful Use Stage 2

Falcon Physician, a provider of electronic health record (EHR) software to nephrologists and a subsidiary of DaVita HealthCare Partners, a leading provider of kidney care and health care services, announced that it has successfully completed the rigorous requirements needed to become certified for Meaningful Use Stage 2. Falcon Physician received certification for both Stages 1 and 2 through Drummond, the industry leader in software certification.

Meaningful Use is the set of standards, defined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which allows for providers to earn incentive dollars by complying with a set of specific criteria. The purpose of Meaningful Use is to encourage electronic exchange of patient data among health record systems through common data sets. Sharing patient data in a standard format and vocabulary benefits both the patient and the providers and allows for access to information in a faster, easier, and more accurate manner.

"At Falcon Physician we have worked hard to take the government's rigorous and complex requirements and make them manageable for doctors," said Derek Schoonover, vice president of information technology for Falcon Physician. "We believe that Meaningful Use participation and EHR adoption is the right path for physicians to take as our industry moves toward integrated care."

The Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs provide financial incentives for the meaningful use of certified EHR technology to improve patient care. To receive an EHR incentive payment, and avoid penalties, providers have to show that they are meaningfully using their EHRs by meeting thresholds for a number of objectives. The EHR Incentive Programs are phased in three stages with increasing requirements.

Stage 2 takes Meaningful Use to the next level with more complex measures than Stage 1. In Stage 2 measures include the requiring of health information exchange (HIE) through communication between physicians and patient tracking their own health records online. It also includes increased patient-controlled data and more complex reporting needs.