CMS Reduces Burden on Meaningful Use programs for the year of 2018

The CMS has acted to substantially decrease burdens on hospitals targeting to acquire the meaningful use programs of electronic health records (EHRs).

Hospitals are being given another year to use the 2014 Edition of Certified EHR Technology (CEHRT) software. Facilities also now have the option of continuing to meet modified Stage 2 measures for meaningful use programs, instead of being required to move to Stage 3 in 2018. Under the new final rule, hospitals now are not required to meet Stage 3 until the year of 2019.

Hospitals, at their option, also can use a combination of the 2014 and 2015 editions of meaningful use software.

The revisions to meaningful use regulations were issued today in a final rule covering the Fiscal Year 2018 Inpatient Prospective Payment System, which broadly covers payments to providers under Medicare.

Moreover, hospitals will be needed to report only four electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs) in 2017 and 2018, rather than eight measures. And, providers can select any quarter of data for eCQM reporting for both years.

Also under the final rule, CMS is developing new requirements or revising existing requirements for eligible professionals (EPs), eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals (CAHs) participating in the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs.

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, an expert group that represents chief information officers and other healthcare IT professionals, highly praised the new policies.

“CMS took into account that both hospitals and vendors require more time to prepare for 2015 certified EHRs,” stated Liz Johnson, CHIME board chair and CIO of acute hospitals and applied clinical informatics at Tenet Healthcare. “Taken together, the common sense changes CMS made will give greater stability and certainty to hospitals, permitting them to continue to forge ahead using technology to better treat the patients they serve.”

The 2,456-page final rule, of which just a small portion addresses the meaningful use programs changes, is available here.

 

VA Receives $233M from Congress for EHR Update with Conditions

Congress has given $233 million in its last fiscal year 2016 omnibus bill for sustained modernization of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ VistA EHR network. Although, the appropriation—signed into law by President Obama—comes with few conditions and restrictions.

The EHR enhancement attempt, called the VistA Evolution program, calls for the addition of an Enterprise Health Management Platform (eHMP)—a set of latest modular-based sections—to replace the Computerized Patient Record System, which is the existing user interface that clinicians utilize while delivering care. Among other functions, the latest eHMP platform will enable the VA to meet several of the 2014 Edition Meaningful Use certification criteria for HIT sections.

Although, legislative language bounds the use of congressional funding until VA indicates functional improvements in the interoperability of the network to seamlessly exchange veterans’ medical information among the VA, Department of Defense and the private sector.

Not more than 25% of the funds can be obligated or spent until the VA Secretary submits a report to both House and Senate appropriations committees giving specifics on the scope and functionality of projects within the VistA Evolution program, involving proposed alterations to the program as well as the milestones and timeline linked with acquiring interoperability.

Lawmakers are specifically fascinated in the definition being utilized for interoperability between DoD and VA EHR networks, the metrics to measure the extent of interoperability, and the growth toward establishing and implementing all components and levels of interoperability involving semantic interoperability.

However, DoD and VA have devoted to acquiring interoperability between their separate EHR networks, the 2 departments sustain to miss significant deadlines and have yet to develop outcome-oriented targets and metrics for measuring their growth toward interoperable EHRs, in accordance to an August 2015 audit by the Government Accountability Office.

In accordance to GAO, DoD and VA missed an Oct. 1, 2014, deadline developed by Congress in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2014 to certify that entire healthcare information in their networks complied with national standards and were computable in actual time.

Auditors also disclosed that a number of important activities in the departments’ network modernization policies will be executed beyond Dec. 31, 2016, the target time established in the NDAA for DoD and VA to deploy modernized EHR software to motivate clinicians while making sure complete standards-based interoperability.