This case involves a mid-sized inpatient hospital located in a rural area. In an effort to effectively use their adopted EHR system to attest to the CMS EHR Incentive Program, the hospitals designated meaningful use team is responsible for mapping the programs requirements to the data that are currently collected within the EHR to ensure program compliance. Eligible hospitals are required to capture and report information on numerous objectives, including electronic clinical quality measures. Each measure requires multiple data elements for the calculation, for example, inclusion criteria (age) or exclusion criteria (diagnosis).

1. As hospitals prepare to meet Meaningful Use criteria by collecting, calculating, and reporting data from electronic health record systems, what types of sources systems should they be mapping their data requirements to and why?