The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) has determined that the California Smokers’ Helpline meets the Specialized Registry Reporting measure. The California Smokers’ Helpline, funded primarily by the CDPH, California Tobacco Control Program, provides free tobacco cessation counseling in English, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean and Vietnamese. It also conducts population research using data collected from participants.
Beginning in 2013, the University of California Davis Health System integrated a proactive, two-way eReferral to the California Smokers’ Helpline into its EHR. The other four University of California health systems followed suit over the next two years. In 2015, the CDPH designated the California Smokers’ Helpline as a Public Health “Specialized” Registry and the University of California Irvine Health System used this designation to demonstrate Meaningful Use (MU) compliance.
The designation of the California Smokers’ Helpline as a Specialized Registry helps link public health and health care systems. It supports efforts to ensure that health systems routinely screen all patients for tobacco use or exposure, advise all tobacco users to quit, and offer evidence based cessation assistance to those who are willing to make a quit attempt. Data in this registry can be used both to help individual tobacco users quit, e.g. by sending them repeated reminders to quit with offers of assistance, and to understand larger trends in the tobacco using population and influence cessation on a population level.
Following successful implementation of eReferrals within the five University of California health systems, the California Smokers’ Helpline is currently expanding its eReferral service to a large outpatient clinic system and two additional hospitals, and hopes to expand the program further in the future. Instructions and criteria for implementation of eReferrals to the California Smokers’ Helpline will be available in September 2016.
Early adopters of Stage 3 will still be able to submit this registry to fulfill the Stage 3 Meaningful Use Public Health Registry Measure. For 2017, please submit under the 2014 Edition CEHRT criteria.
If you have any questions specific to Specialized Registries, please send your inquiries to MeaningfulUse@cdph.ca.gov.
