Kim Allan Williams, president of the American College of Cardiology, in a statement said the organization had “concerns” about CMS’ decision “to align all three stages of meaningful use, as this does not account for the reality of the situation faced by the medical community working every day to implement the meaningful use program and to improve care for their patients” (HealthLeaders Media, 10/7).
Advertisement
The Department of Health and Human Services, at long last, has published its final rule for Meaningful Use, combining the modifications to the incentive program for 2015 through 2017 with Stage 3.
The American Hospital Association (AHA) called the ruling a “mixed bag” since it did allow for greater flexibility and the 90-day reporting period, but said the organization was disappointed that the new rule included “too many new and more challenging requirements”. Because of the switch from federal fiscal to calendar year reporting, hospitals may use any 90-day period between October 1, 2014, and December 31, 2015, for purposes of its 2015 meaningful use attestation.
“We have a shared goal of electronic health records helping physicians, clinicians, and hospitals to deliver better care, smarter spending, and healthier people”, said Patrick Conway MD, CMS deputy administrator for innovation and quality and chief medical officer, in a statement.
He also goes on to say, “We eliminated unnecessary requirements, simplified and increased flexibility for those that remain, and focused on interoperability, information exchange, and patient engagement”.
The controversial final rules will apply from this year through 2017.
The rules are a big deal because they have to do with electronic health record systems, as well as Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive programs. However, he said the next stage requires “significant changes” to make success a reality. We urge CMS to use the additional public comment period provided for Stage 3 to further improve the program… HHS officials late Tuesday released the long-awaited Stage 3 rules, as well as modifications to the current Stage 2. For example, CHIME discovered unintended consequences in the final Stage 1 rule several weeks after it was initially released by CMS. This input could be considered by CMS for future policy developments for the EHR incentive program, as well as other government programs, the agency says.
“They’ve missed a golden opportunity to develop bipartisan support in Congress and throughout the country for an electronic health records system that would genuinely help patients”, the senator said in a statement.
As part of the regulations, there also will be a 60-day public comment period to gather additional feedback about the direction of the Meaningful Use program going forward in light of MACRA.
It was mentioned in HCI reports that many health IT leaders showed confidence in the flexibilities to the program provided by CMS. They really didn’t change anything beyond the two rules becoming one regulation. The final rule improved interoperability “by adopting new and updated vocabulary and content standards for the structured recording and exchange of health information, including a Common Clinical Data Set composed primarily of data expressed using adopted standards; and rigorously testing the Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA) data exchange standard”. “In fact, in our audits of providers who attested to the requirements of the EHR Incentive Program, this objective and measure are failed more frequently than any other requirement”.
Advertisement
HIMSS has consisentely made the case that there should be at least a year and a half between the publication of a new meaningful use rule and the start of a new stage’s reporting period, she said, and “the 27 months provided in this final rule appears to address this issue”. Afterward, CMS may modify its final rules and lay the groundwork for an NPRM in mid-2016 detailing the implementation of MIPS.
