Specialized Registry

Reporting to registries is an integral part of improving population and public health. The Meaningful Use (MU) Stage 2 regulations added a new public health related menu (optional) objective for Eligible Professionals (EPs), the capability to identify and report specific cases to a specialized registry, other than a cancer registry, except where prohibited, and in accordance with the applicable jurisdictional laws and practice. This objective was included to provide more flexibility in the menu objectives that EPs can choose. Specialized registry reporting is likely to provide many EPs with an MU menu option that is more aligned with their scope of practice. This objective may provide meaningful use credit to those EPs engaged in the beneficial use of Certified Electronic Health Record Technology (CEHRT) to report specific cases and/or case information to specialized registries.

The MU Stage 2 regulations are purposefully general in describing specialized registries to provide flexibility and avoid excluding registries.

• Specialized registries could include, but are not limited to: birth defects registries, chronic disease registries, and traumatic injury registries etc.
• In addition, specialized registries operated by patient safety and quality improvement organizations that enable knowledge generation or process improvement regarding the diagnosis, therapy, and prevention of conditions that affect a population could be considered.
• The specialized registry cannot be duplicative of any of the other registries included in other meaningful use objectives and measures. This means that an EP cannot meet the immunization, syndromic surveillance, or cancer objectives and this objective by reporting to the same registry.
• Proposed EP Measure for this objective is, successful ongoing submission of specific case information from CEHRT to a specialized registry for the entire EHR reporting period.
• EPs who either do not wish to participate with a specialized registry or cannot overcome the barriers of doing so can defer or exclude this measure as their situation warrants, thus avoiding the burden of compliance with this objective.

Specialized registries may be sponsored or maintained by Public Health Agencies (PHAs) or other organizations (e.g., national specialty societies, patient safety organizations, quality improvements organizations).

There are no certification and standards criteria specified in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) 2014 Edition EHR Technology Certification Criteria corresponding to this objective. Therefore, to meet this objective, the EPs would need to electronically submit data from CEHRT following the standards, specifications, and vocabularies required by the specialized registry.

Additional Information:
For more information, please check the document developed by the Stage 2 Meaningful Use Public Health Reporting Requirements Task Force titled “Meaningful Use Stage 2 Public Health Agency Readiness Specialized Registries”. This document is available on the task force’s community page on phConnect at: Stage 2 MU PH Reporting Requirements Task Force.