A proposed rule was issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on December 30, 2009 that outlines proposed provisions governing the EHR incentive programs, including defining the central concept of “meaningful use” of EHR technology.
CMS’s proposed rule would phase in more comprehensive criteria for demonstrating meaningful use in three stages. Stage 1 would begin 2011 and focus on electronically capturing health information and using that information to track major clinical conditions, increasing communication between care providers, and initiating the reporting of clinical quality measures and public health information. Clinical quality measures would need to be directly submitted to CMS starting 2012.
CMS will build upon findings in Stage 1 to propose two additional Stages of meaningful use. Stage 2 will likely add criteria in the areas of disease management, clinical decision support, medication management, patient access to their health information, transitions in care, quality measurement and research, and increased communication with public health agencies. Stage 3 may further expand on Stage 1 and 2 to focus on achieving improvements in health care quality, safety and efficiency, decision support for national high-priority conditions, providing patient access to self-management online tools, and improving overall population health outcomes.
In addition, an interim final regulation (IFR) issued by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) proposes an incremental approach to adopting initial standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria for EHR technology to support meaningful use. Subsequent rules will contain standards with greater detail to achieving interoperability.
Both CMS and ONC encourage public comment on each regulation.
For more information on the proposed rule, visit:
CMS: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/Recovery/11_HealthIT.asp
ONC: http://healthit.hhs.gov/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=1153&mode=2
