The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) brought significant incentives to providers for implementing certified EHR technologies. It specifically requires utilization of certified electronic health records (EHRs) for electronic exchange of health information and for submission of clinical quality and other measures to the federal agencies. The most important barriers in the ELR implementation are a lack of funding at health departments, shortage of staff at health departments, and the variable content and format of ELR messages. The MU is a new factor that may foster ELR technologies through implementation incentives and through standardization of EHRs.
Objective
The objective of this presentation is to evaluate the potential impact of Stage 1 meaningful use (MU) health IT certification (MUC), on development of national electronic laboratory reporting (ELR) capacities.