Registering for the ARRA/EHR Incentive Program, or How I Spent My Snow-Day

Note my newest list of links on the sidebar, designed to help you navigate your way to "Meaningful Use" of your office electronic health record, and more importantly to connect you with the $44,000 of "stimulus money" set aside for each Eligible Professional (EP) who demonstrates meaningful use of his or her EHR.

Perhaps you've read here before how to determine if you are an Eligible Provider.  If you're still not sure if you're an EP or whether you qualify for incentives under the Medicare or Medicaid-based program, click here.

For Step 2, "Register for EHR incentive program,"  the Center for medicare and medicaid services has set up a completely online registration and attestation process.  Tricky, though, you need to have the User ID and password that you created when you first got your (scary organ music) NPI number.

Luckily, you've used this User ID and password recently, maybe even changed your password (you can NEVER change your User ID) or modified some of your profile data ...you remember, when you signed up for or made sure you were enrolled in PECOS!

The good news is there is a great guide to go page-by page, even click-by-click through the registration process on the CMSwebsite, which is turning out to be quite a resource to obtain information about the EHR incentive programs.

Registration began on January 3, 2011, and CMS reported 4,000 registrants in the first four days.  You don't need to have your EHR's certification number (although it is available here if your EHR is certified by the Office of the National Coordinator), you don't even have to have an electronic health record yet to register.   It is expected that many of us are in varying stages of adoption, implementation, and meaningful use of electronic health records, but registration as an eligible provider is just one of the steps you can take now to qualify for ARRA payments.  So why not sign up today?