Home Forums Discussions Meaningful Use Core item 8 exclusion?

I am just starting the grind of working my way thru MU.
I'm in Peds and I only check BP in kids once a year. Also, though all my patients are weighed at ea visit, they we don't check heights unless they are in for well checks.
I believe it would be too cumbersome to do wt, ht and BP on ea visit even for only a 90 day period for MU purposes and I believe it is standard practice in Peds to NOT check BP and height ea visit.
Therefore, I plan to use the exclusion to item 8 saying 'not relevant to my scope of practice.'

Comments? Opionions?

Hi Dr_AJ.

I do not believe the exclusion would apply in this case. Not that there is anything stopping you from claiming the exlusion, but it might trigger an audit with pediatrics (and we all know CMS is getting stricter with the audits lately).

For this measue, you have to record height, weight, and BP of patients 2 and older. This just has do be done for one visit durring the reporting period, not every visit. Here is the description of the numerator requirements from CMS:

? DENOMINATOR: Number of unique patients age 2 or over seen by the EP during the EHR reporting period.

? NUMERATOR: Number of patients in the denominator who have at least one entry of their height, weight and blood pressure are recorded as structured data.

So this means it just has to be done once durring the reporting period for each patient.