Allscripts MyWay Client among first to see payment under CMS EHR incentive program

by  Oliver, Valeri  on 8/4/2011 12:25 PM

When Zabrina Gonzaga and Rob Dunbar watched office manager Linda Jarvis and Dr. H. Curtiss Merrick click the attestation “submit” button for their EHR incentive payment, they literally started clapping.

It was a breakthrough, not just for Dr. Merrick’s office in Morehead City, N.C., but for the many small doctors’ offices that are MyWay customers.  Dr. Merrick is among the first of what will be a rising tide of Clients to receive incentive payments under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which specifies the main components of Meaningful Use of EHRs.                                                                                                  

The work with Dr. Merrick helped lay the groundwork for educational webinars and product updates that will mean more of our client-physicians achieve what Merrick’s office celebrated on July 26th: Receipt of its first $18,000 incentive program payment.

Gonzaga, Solutions Manager for MyWay, and Dunbar, Early Adopter Coordinator, say they are both thrilled with Dr. Merrick’s success. His office was part of a pilot project involving MyWay clients.

“I can tell you it was overwhelming for them at first,” Gonzaga said. “His was a very good practice to represent our client base in our pilot. They were accommodating and very good to report anything that they thought was difficult. That way, we could go back and look at ways to capture the data using different workflows. And all of that information ended up being something that our other clients could benefit from.”

Doctors who meet Meaningful Use requirements can receive up to $44,000 from Medicare and up to $63,000 from Medicaid. Hospitals can get anywhere from $2 million to $6 million for meeting requirements — depending on their number of discharges —  plus the Medicare and Medicaid incentives for each of their in-house physicians.

“My solo internal medicine practice went live on MyWay on August 24, 2010,” Merrick said. “The MyWay training staff was great. We never had a cash flow disruption. In early 2011, Allscripts assigned Zabrina Gonzaga and her team to work with us on achieving Meaningful Use via Medicare. We attested on May 24th. Zabrina was phenomenal. She worked very closely with my practice manager and me to assure that our tracking reports were complete and correct, so that when I attested, I had all the necessary documentation in hand.”

Not every MyWay Client has Zabrina and Rob assigned to them, but they do now all have the benefits of the early work conducted with Dr. Merrick’s office