Complete Meaningful Use Certification

OpenEMR, the most popular open source electronic health records (EHR) and medical practice management solution, has announced today that OpenEMR version 5.0 has achieved Complete ONC certification, through Infogard. This certification is vital for medical practices in the U.S. to comply with MACRA and participate in Medicare’s Quality Payment Program.

The Complete Meaningful Use Certification was the result of a community effort that spanned several years, involving over $200,000 in effort and code contributions. The number of enhancements brought into OpenEMR was expansive and includes standardization of patient medical information, coordination of care, patient privacy, patient engagement, security, public health and automated calculations of metrics and clinical quality measures. The list of direct contributors to this effort included ZH Healthcare, Ensoftek, Visolve, MI-Squared, Brady Miller MD, EMR Direct, Jan Jajalla, Sunset Systems, Columbia University Certification of Professional Achievement in Health IT, Jeff Guillory NP, Ray Magauran MD, and John Tenny MD, among others.

The OpenEMR 5.0 release boasts many features unrelated to meaningful use. Modernization was the theme, which includes a new logo and website, www.open-emr.org. A major enhancement in this release is the sleek user interface, geared towards efficient workflow. “I have used OpenEMR for seven years. The new user interface makes the life of providers simpler and easier, with fast retrieval and entering of patient information in a single screen, while supporting a robust feature set,” said OpenEMR user Dr. Arnab Naha MBBS.

Another enhancement is a feature-packed Ophthalmology/Optometry module, designed and built by Ray Magauran MD, a practicing Ophthalmologist. “As ophthalmologists, we need a product that matches our workflows, doesn’t slow us down or cost an arm and a leg. My clinic is now paperless. We have moved into the cloud,” said OpenEMR volunteer developer, Ray Magauran MD.

This release brings enhancements in the patient tracker, reporting, scheduling, billing, security, and form validation modules. Internationalization of OpenEMR was enhanced by adding support for right to left languages to the already included 33 languages. Enterprise use of OpenEMR was strengthened by upgrading the MySQL database engine to InnoDB. Accessibility for OpenEMR developers was improved by migrating the codebase repository from Sourceforge to Github, which allows for efficient, coordinated development.

The OpenEMR community remains committed to continued support and improvement of the OpenEMR product. “The last year has been a golden age for OpenEMR with increasing active development and a broadening community of developers, users, volunteers, professionals, and OpenEMR champions. As OpenEMR continues to improve and needs for OpenEMR increases, I expect OpenEMR’s successes to continue into the future,” said OpenEMR project co-administrator Brady Miller MD.