Meaningful Use definition begins to firm up

The Health IT Policy Committee gave its final recommendations on "meaningful use" to the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the National Coordinator last Thursday. The meaningful use workgroup had tweaked its original recommendations because of the 700+ comments received.

Paul Tang of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, chairman of the meaningful use workgroup, said the revised recommendations include a faster timeline for giving patients access to information. Access to electronic health information will be counted in 2011, he said, and real-time access within personal health records was moved to 2013 from 2015. The recommendations also went to an "adoption year" approach in which 2011 is considered the first year. An organization must meet the 2011 standards for its first year of use, the 2013 standards for its third year and so on, even if it first adopts EHRs in 2012, 2013 or 2014. However, to qualify for the full five years of incentive payments, the organization would have to adopt by 2012. Penalties begin in 2015, and Tony Trenkle of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services worried that an organization adopting EHRs in 2014 would have to jump a huge bar in one year to avoid the penalties.

The committee also adopted the broad outlines of the recommendations made by the certification group, which were to focus certification on meaningful use, leverage certification to improve security, privacy and interoperability, improve objectivity and transparency of the certification process, expand certification to a range of software sources, including open source and self-developed and develop a short-term transition plan. Within those high- level recommendations, the workgroup had suggested details, which it will continue to work on. Among them were that HHS should define certification criteria, rather than certification organizations, and that multiple organizations should be authorized to certify. The workgroup recognized industry concerns about opening up the process, but determined that competition would be better and would also help alleviate any bottlenecks that might ensue, co-chairmen Marc Probst of Intermountain Healthcare and Paul Egerman told the committee. They said they intended to accept public comment.

There are many suggestions out there, as the definition solidifies over the next few weeks, I'll keep you posted.

Source: Leslie Cantu, Meaningful Use Definition for Health IT Begins to Firm Up, Washington Internet Daily, Today's News Section (July 17, 2009)