Objective 6: Provide Patient-Specific Education

What the objective requires   What that means for you   Are you excluded from having to do this?
Use clinically relevant information from Certified EHR Technology (CEHRT) to identify patient-specific education resources and provide those resources to the patient.  

Patient specific education resources identified by CEHRT are provided to patients for more than 10% of all unique patients with office visits seen by the EP during the EHR reporting period.

  

Any EP who has no office visits during the EHR reporting period.

You must provide patient-specific education to more than 10% of all unique patients seen during the Meaningful Use reporting period.

The Patient Specific Education screen shows patients who did not receive educational material. If or when you have delivered educational material to one of these patients, check the box next to the patient's name and click the Apply Changes button.

NOTE:  
ChiroTouch does not provide the educational materials referred to in this objective. Instead, the software allows you to track that you have provided information.

 

Patient-Specific Education Resources identified by Certified EHR Technology – Resources or a topic area of resources identified through logic built into certified EHR technology which evaluates information about the patient and suggests education resources that would be of value to the patient.

Unique Patient – If a patient is seen by an EP more than once during the EHR reporting period, then for purposes of measurement that patient is only counted once in the denominator for the measure. All the measures relying on the term ‘‘unique patient’’ relate to what is contained in the patient’s medical record. Not all of this information will need to be updated or even be needed by the provider at every patient encounter. This is especially true for patients whose encounter frequency is such that they would see the same provider multiple times in the same EHR reporting period.

Use this equation to determine whether you meet the attestation requirement.

Numerator ÷ Denominator = Result
Number of patients in the denominator who were provided patient-specific education resources identified by the Certified EHR Technology.   Number of unique patients with office visits seen by the EP during the EHR reporting period.  

The resulting percentage must be more than 10% in order for an EP to meet this measure.

You can claim an exclusion if you are an EP who:

  • Has no office visits during the EHR reporting period.

Unique patients with office visits means that to count in the denominator a patient must be seen by the EP for one or more office visits during the EHR reporting period, but if a patient seen by the EP more than once during the EHR reporting period, the patient only counts once in the denominator.

The EP must use elements within certified EHR technology (CEHRT) to identify educational resources specific to patients' needs. Certified EHR technology is certified to use the patient's problem list, medication list, or laboratory test results to identify the patient-specific educational resources. The EP may use these elements or may use additional elements within CEHRT to identify educational resources specific to patients' needs. The EP can then provide these educational resources to patients in a useful format for the patient (such as, electronic copy, printed copy, electronic link to source materials, through a patient portal or PHR).

The education resources or materials do not have to be stored within or generated by the CEHRT.

There is no universal “transitive effect” policy in place for this objective and measure. It may vary based on the resources and materials provided and the timing of that provision. If an action is clearly attributable to a single provider, it may only count in the numerator for that provider. However, if the action is not attributable to a single provider, it may be counted in the numerator for all providers sharing the CEHRT who have the patient in their denominator for the EHR reporting period.

The action may occur before, during or after the EHR reporting period but must take place no earlier than the start of the same calendar year as the EHR reporting period and no later than the date of attestation in order to count in the numerator.

In order to meet this objective and measure, an EP must use the capabilities and standards of CEHRT at 45 CFR 170.314 (a)(15).