The window opens April 18 for eligible professionals, hospitals and critical-access facilities to line up and attest that they've met their respective meaningful-use criteria and are eligible to receive Medicare incentive payments for the installation and use of electronic health-record systems under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Registered providers seeking part of the multibillion-dollar pie of federal EHR incentive payments to be doled out under the Medicare program through 2015 must attest to their meaningful-use status using an online system created by the CMS. A primer (PDF) on the attestation process is available at the CMS' website.

To meet meaningful-use requirements, physicians and other eligible professionals must report on their achievement in 15 core measures, any five of 10 additional operations measures and six clinical-quality measures. Eligible hospitals and critical-access providers must report on 14 core measures, five of 10 additional measures and 15 clinical-quality measures.

During this first year of the Medicare program, both eligible professionals and hospitals must attest that they've met the criteria for 90 consecutive days. Registration opened in January for both eligible professionals and hospitals for the Medicare EHR incentive program.

For the Medicaid EHR incentive programs, providers are not required to meet meaningful-use criteria for their first year of eligibility, and some states already have started issuing payments to providers.

Links to the states' Medicaid EHR programs also are available on the CMS' website.