On Thursday, August 23, 2012 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the final rule on Stage 2 of the federal electronic health record (EHR) system incentive program.ABC is very pleased to announce F1RSTUse, the first complete EHR platform built exclusively for anesthesiologists and pain management specialists to satisfy easily Stage 1 of Meaningful Use as required to earn the Medicare EHR incentive payment.  Stage 1 requirements remain in effect for the next several years; one of the major changes of the August 23rd final rule was to extend the deadline to meet Stage 2 criteria until 2014.  Other changes contained in the 672-page rule (PDF) will be reviewed in future Alerts.The industry has been discussing the impracticality of attesting to Meaningful Use with current technologies and relationships that are in place for anesthesia.  We at ABC also noted the lack of ease implementing this requirement for the specialty.  Attestation was...