ONC sets 2 interoperability steps for contributors

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has issued interoperability steps as needed by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA).

The intent of the measures is to fulfill the need to “acquire widespread exchange of health information through interoperable certified EHR technology nationwide” by the deadline of the day Dec. 31, 2018.

Particularly, MACRA needed the Department of Health and Human Services, in consultation with stakeholders, to make metrics for the exchange and utilization of clinical data to facilitate coordinated care and make better patient results between participants in the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record Incentive Programs and others nationwide.

The target time for developing the metrics—July 1, 2016—was met by HHS and declared by HHS in a blog written by Seth Pazinski and Talisha Searcy, both directors in the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Analysis at the ONC. In accordance to the blog of ONC, the metrics are deployed on 100 comments acquired from healthcare and health information technology agencies, as well as internal analysis.

“We’ve identified 2 measures in specific that satisfy both the feedback we got and MACRA’s particular parameters,” write Pazinski and Searcy in the blog of ONC. “Primarily, these steps don’t add to contributors’ reporting burden as part of their involvement in federal health care programs such as Medicare or Medicaid, but instead of come from existing national surveys of hospitals and office-based physicians.”

The 2 metrics are:

• The ratio of healthcare contributors who are electronically participating in the following key domains of interoperable exchange of health data: sending; receiving; finding (querying); and integrating information got from outside or external sources.

• The proportion of healthcare contributors who report utilizing the data they electronically get from outside contributors and sources for clinical decision making.

Section 106(b)(1)(B) of MACRA elaborates primary components of interoperability that should be measured and the population that should be the main focus of measurement, explaining the “widespread interoperability” as proposed interoperability between certified EHR technology networks that are employed by meaningful EHR users.

“However the MACRA needs for measuring interoperability highly concentrates on ‘meaningful users,’ we’re committed to advancing interoperability of health data more broadly,” claims the ONC blog. “We’ll be extending our measurement attempts to involve populations across the care continuum in the near-term, as well as an increased focus on results in the longer-term.”

Nevertheless, ONC was quick to note that the metrics are separate from the intended Quality Payment Program that is been proposed for the payment of office-based Medicare physicians.