BIRMINGHAM, AL – SuccessEHS client Mississippi Family Medicine received their Medicare Electronic Health Record (EHR) incentive check on May 23 after successfully attesting to Meaningful Use on April 26.

When Kim Stokley of Mississippi Family Medicine learned about the Meaningful Use Incentive programs, she knew her practice needed to act fast. "When SuccessEHS started sending out emails regarding Meaningful Use as part of their Integrated Success Services program last fall, I went to our doctors and told them we needed to get ahead of the game," Stokley said.  

Stokley's initiative paid off. She encouraged the two providers and nine staff members at the practice to get on board with Meaningful Use. The whole practice approached the process as a mandatory government change, so everyone took a positive attitude and worked hard to implement the changes necessary to comply with the Meaningful Use measures and objectives.

They began by implementing e-Prescribing in October 2010. Next, they began using the system to check-in patients, and made demographics mandatory for each patient. Once the clinic was e-prescribing, collecting demographics, entering vitals and maintaining allergy lists, they began providing patients with a clinical summary at check-out.  By February, Mississippi Family Medicine had implemented patient education, set up their patient portal and begun using SuccessEHS's clinical knowledge base. The final stages of the EHR implementation were completed in March, when the family practice began processing EHR requests and using the solution's speech recognition tool for dictation.

When Mississippi Family Medicine successfully attested to Meaningful Use on April 26—less than 10 days after registration opened—they became one of the first in Mississippi, and even the nation, to do so. Leading the nation in complying with initiatives to improve quality of care is no small task, but Stokley said it was actually quite simple. "When you fill out your attestation form, you have to put in all the numbers," Stokley said. "It's very simple because of the Meaningful Use report from the SuccessEHS system."

Stokley offered some final advice for other practices trying to complete this process: "Don't try to change your clinic overnight; take it in phases. And last, when you don't know, find someone who does and ask them. SuccessEHS has plenty of people you can talk to."

About SuccessEHS

SuccessEHS is a nationally acclaimed vendor providing a single solution Practice Management and Electronic Health Record. Founded in 1995, SuccessEHS established itself as a leader in the emerging practice management applications market by delivering an innovative blend of clinical, operational and financial software paired with a suite of specialized integrated success services. SuccessEHS, entirely in-house developed and supported, has achieved multiple certifications from CCHIT.

SuccessEHS's SuccessEHS 6.0 is a CCHIT Certified ® 2011 Ambulatory EHR, and additionally certified for Child Health, with a 5-star usability rating; this product received certification as a Complete EHR on September 30, 2010. The clinical quality measures certified include: NQF 0421, NQF 0013, NQF 0028, NQF 0041, NQF 0024, NQF 0038, NQF 0043, NQF 0031, and NQF 0034. The additional software used in testing includes Multum, SuccessEHS Patient Portal, ExitCare Patient Education, and Oracle.

This Complete EHR is 2011/2012 compliant and is certified by the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT®), an ONC-ATCB, in accordance with the applicable certification criteria for Eligible Providers adopted by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. This certification neither represents an endorsement by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services nor guarantees the receipt of incentive payments.