Home Forums Discussions Meaningful Use Vital signs and MU requirement

What allows one to state that vitals are not relevant to them?

I am a rheumatologist and only when patients are on appropriate medications do I really need BP. Weight is often not an issue either......

I am sure other specialists have the same issue......

Neil, there is an exemption for vital signs, recognizing that certain specialty fields don't need vital signs in their practice of medicine. When you submit to the attestation procedure on the CMS website you will see what I'm referring to. It should be no big deal for you. For every criteria question on the CMS attestation website, there is an exemption status question. On each question, you are asked simply if your practice is exempt from the criteria. It lists specific reasons why you are saying you are exempt. You click the button attesting to this fact you are exempt for that criteria and move on to the next question.

Be careful. Not taking vital signs can leave you wide open to litigation. I read case law, etc all the time. Recently a doc (urologist) was also sued when a patient 3 days later died from a stroke - they could prove that blood pressure was not well controlled by his primary doc and made the claim that a good urologist following guidelines would have taken a blood pressure and sought treatment for the man. We even have dentists taking blood pressures around here and I am glad as some docs in town (of the primary type) fail to get a blood pressure on a routine visit - and you guessed it...a visit to refill blood pressure medications....

I agree that you should be careful taking the exclusion. It states "An EP who believes that all three vital signs of height, weight, and blood pressure have no relevance to scope of practice would be excluded from this requirement."

While I don't think that these values have much relevance to many of the patients I see as a gastroenterologist, I did not feel comfortable saying that ALL 3 have NO relevance to my scope of practice.

Babies and blood pressures... I thought about starting a new thread but we can probably keep the number down to the number of requirements.

I saw a 7 mo old baby today and the aqua colored boxes are lit up for BP. The requirement is to do vitals for 2 YEARS and older. The 'check button' I click before signing says I'm getting dinged on this. Is this a problem with AC or will the program ultimately remove this patient from my denominator? Maybe BERT and some PEDS folks can answer this if they have experimented with it!