Office-based Physicians that have Demonstrated Meaningful Use through the Medicare EHR Incentive Program

These visualizations depict the county and state proportions of all office-based medical doctors (MD) and doctors of osteopathy (DO) that have demonstrated meaningful use of certified health IT through the Medicare Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive program through 2015. These visualizations use the EHR Products Used for Meaningful Use Attestation public use file (PUF) and the SK&A Office-based Provider database^{see Source} to calculate these proportions.

The PUF provides the counts of all MD/DOs that have demonstrated meaningful use, and the SK&A database provides the total counts of these providers at the state and county district. Furthermore, the National Plan & Provider Enumeration System (NPPES) was used to match provider specialty and geographic data to each provider missing that data in the PUF. This data match improved the accuracy of these calculations. The SK&A database does not include non-MD/DO ambulatory providers that are eligible to participate in the Medicare EHR Incentive program, such as dentists, chiropractors, and podiatrists. These providers were removed from for this analysis, so that only MD/DO meaningful users were compared to MD/DO counts from the SK&A database.

Note: The denominators include all U.S. MDs and DOs. Some of these individuals may not be eligible for the Medicare EHR Incentive Programs. Therefore, these values underestimate the proportion of eligible providers who have achieved meaningful use. Though CMS provides a national estimate of all office-based health care professionals eligible to participate in the Medicare EHR Incentive Programs, no such count exists only for MDs and DOs at or below the national level.

ONC, therefore, uses the count of all office-based physicians at the state and county level from the SK&A database to estimate participation rates below the national level. See Health Care Professional Participation in CMS EHR Incentive Programs quick stat for more information on overall office-based provider (physicians and non-physicians) program participation. See the Hospital Meaningful Use Dashboard for in depth visualizations of hospital participation in the Medicare EHR Incentive Program at the state and national level.

[1] Calculations include office-based physicians that have attested to and/or been paid for demonstrating meaningful use of certified health IT through the Medicare EHR Incentive Program.

[2] These state and county participation rates do not include payments made to physicians demonstrating meaningful use or receiving a payment for adopt, implement, or upgrade (AIU) through the Medicaid EHR Incentive Program. The PUF used for this analysis includes only Medicare EHR Incentive Program data.

[3] In depth eligibility criteria can be found at <cms.gov>.