Topic: Choosing between menu measure 9 (Immunization Registries) and menu measure 10 (Syndromic Surveillance data to Public Health agencies) for Meaningful Use Attestation in 2013.
Discussion:Many counties now have immunization registries and some regions have their public health departments ready to exchange information with practices. The question then becomes which measure to choose from and what are challenges for the practices. We would like to delve into this topic and identify the problems that many providers face while choosing one of these measures.
Immunization Registry:
We will take the case of California providers as a case study. In California most of the counties now have access to CAIR (California Immunization Registry). CAIR has done a good job in providing the information on their website and educating the providers on how to connect with their new IMP (immunization messaging platform). So if they are ready and the information is available what is the problem? Providers can connect to CAIR and they should be able to use this measure right?
Here is the problem: The costs of EHR Interfaces is prohibitive. Some vendors charge as much as $7,000 for a single provider practice to set up an interface. Most of the free or less expensive cloud based EHRs are not yet ready to set up these interfaces with the EHRs. So this becomes a challenge for providers to set up these interfaces for the providers.
So let's look at Syndromic Surveillance Measure then.
Syndromic Surveillance Measure: While sticking to the case study of California, if you click here you will see the areas in California which can submit syndromic surveillance data to public health agencies. So if a provider is in a county where the public health agency is not ready, they can definitely choose the Menu Measure 10 and claim an exclusion.
Summary:
If a provider is in a county like Los Angeles or Orange county in California where the Public Health agency is not ready they can choose Menu Measure 10 and claim an exclusion. However for those providers who are in counties where the Public Health agency is ready, they definitely have to choose between Menu Measure 9 and Menu Measure 10.
Our thoughts on this are, if you are in an area where the public health agency is ready and also the immunization registry, then it is a better option to go with immunization registry. For 2013 providers only need to sign up with the immunization registry and submit a sample HL7 test file generated from the EHR and pass the requirement. Providers can reach out to their EHR vendor to receive a sample HL7 test file.
Hope this helps.
Author: Sunny Saran
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