According to Black Book Rankings Survey 2013, nearly 30% of all new Electronic Health Records (EHRs) purchases are done to replace old EHRs. This number is expected to go up by year-end as the CMS requirements for achieving of Meaningful Use Stage 2 are changing in 2014. At this point in time, nearly 92% of practices and healthcare centers report their current EHR system as boring and clunky. This is the time where Meaningful Use Stage 2 certified EHR vendors are going to help physicians and healthcare practices meet new requirements set by the government.

But if a practice has been using one EHR system throughout a year, how will changing the EHR vendor affect its ability to achieve Meaningful Use and qualify for incentive payments? Let’s try to analyze this.

First and foremost, you should try to work out possible solutions with your current vendor if they can help you in meeting the 2014 CMS requirements. Ask questions like how long they might take to iron out their shortcomings? Is it affecting your productivity? What penalties could you face by changing your EHR vendor? If they cannot solve these issues, then it is time for you to move on.

So, how will you cope up with the fact that changing an EHR vendor during a year might affect your qualification for Meaningful Use? The CMS has addressed this issue on their website. They advise eligible professionals, hospitals and critical access hospitals to combine their data for selected menu objectives and quality measures from both of their EHR systems. It notes that the count of unique patients does not need to be reconciled when combining data from the two EHR systems.

The CMS further says that all eligible professionals regardless of their stage of Meaningful Use, are only required to show Meaningful Use for a three-month EHR reporting period. This one-time flexibility has only been allowed for reporting periods of 2014 in order to allow providers time to upgrade to new rules of certification.

Most EHR vendors have a long list of clients awaiting implementation. Changing EHR during this time should not be a problem, as long as the vendor is eligible for attestation. If your vendor has its Meaningful Use certification revoked, then it could be a problem.

The transformation from Meaningful Use Stage 1 to Stage 2 is not an easy one and both vendors and practitioners are making necessary changes to be more compliant. The deadline for achieving Meaningful Use Stage 2 is not very far away and they need to start as soon as possible to achieve it. Replacing an EHR system is a long and time-consuming process and you will have to go through plenty of hassles to make it work flawlessly.