HHS Issues Final "Meaningful Use" Standards to Qualify for EHR Incentive Payments
Today's post was authored by FHWN attorney Maro E. Bush.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology recently issued their much-anticipated final meaningful-use information technology regulations that hospitals and physicians must follow to tap into some $27.3 billion in financial incentives under the HITECH act.
In its final meaningful rule published on Tuesday, the CMS abandoned its original all-or-nothing approach to offering incentives for electronic health record (“EHR”) adoption. Healthcare providers now have various ways of reporting objectives to demonstrate meaningful use of EHRs. Additionally, some objectives that are deemed too difficult to achieve by the original 2011 deadline will be delayed a year.
One of the major changes in the final rule requires providers to meet a “core” group of objectives, including electronic prescribing, maintaining an active medication list and providing patients with an electronic copy of their health information upon request. In its proposed meaningful use rule published in January, CMS had required providers to meet 25 measures and hospitals to meet 23 measures in order to demonstrate they were meaningfully using EHR. However, critics of the rule argued that meeting the objectives would impose a heavy burden on providers. Under the final rule, physicians must meet 15 of the core requirements, and hospitals must meet 14. Providers must also choose and meet an additional 10 measures from a “menu set” of procedures, but may defer up to five of them until the next implementation stage.
CMS anticipates that the new approach will allow providers and hospitals to implement the basic elements of meaningful EHR use while qualifying for incentive payments. Through meaningful EHR use, CMS aims to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of healthcare services; reduce healthcare disparities; engage patients and their families; improve the coordination of care; improve population and public health; and ensure the privacy and security of personal medical information.
Physicians and other health care providers who want to learn more about implementing EHR systems and qualifying for incentive payments should contact Maro E. Bush or Mercedes Varasteh Dordeski.
