The road for many providers implementing electronic health records has not been an easy one. But an infographic from health IT resource group HealthPOINT at Dakota State University revealed that 5 percent said the transition process was “traumatizing.” More than 50 percent of providers said it’s “been bumpy,” and another quarter of respondents said they “got through it.”

The infographic combines fun facts like that with a sort of crib sheet for the 1,100+ page Meaningful Use Stage 2 core requirements for EHR set down by the the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and Office of National Coordinator for Health IT last month.

The infographic from the Madison, South Dakota organization compares the Stage 2 core requirements with Stage 1, and outlines the additional information providers must give.

It fleshes out details like requirements for lab results, patient reminders and patient education. It also calls attention to clinical decision support intervention, for example, flagging up potentially problematic interactions with other drugs or if patients have an allergy to a particular drug.

Under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health, or HITECH Act, physicians, healthcare professionals and hospitals can qualify for Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments when they adopt and meaningfully use certified electronic health record technology.

Stage 1 sets down the basic functionalities electronic health records must include like capturing data electronically and providing patients with electronic copies of health information. Stage 2 (which will begin as early as 2014) increases health information exchange between providers and promotes patient engagement by giving patients secure online access to their health information.

As of September, there were more than 84,000 primary care providers that have converted to electronic medical records compared with  17,000 that have implemented Meaningful Use.

States have been working with smaller hospitals and providers who are stretched financially to implement their own EHR systems. Pennsylvania and several other states are using grant programs to get providers to participate in the Direct Messaging program to speed up the exchange of information securely for practices still relying on the postal service to transmit data to their networks of nursing homes, physician practices and labs.