Incoming reaction and comments to the final meaningful use criteria have so far been fairly positive. I don't know if the organizations that are calling for changes are resigned to the fact that the rule making for stage 1 is final and want their comments to be taken into consideration when the stage 2 requirements are being discussed.
For the moment, let's take a look at what changes or transformation meaningful use criteria may experience in the next iteration. David Blumenthal, MD, said the federal government is delaying some of the more ambitious requirements from stage 1. He also said the requirements would be evolving.
The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA) wants more patient safeguards in the meaningful use rule. They want physicians to be required to conduct safety checks before receiving incentive payments for e-prescribing, which is one of the criteria. The final rule reduced the percentage of e-prescriptions transmitted using certified EHR technology from 75 percent to 40 percent. The bottom line is that PCMA wants regulators to ensure that e-prescribing is done correctly, with patient safety being the number one priority. That, of course, makes a lot of sense. Given that patient safety is one of the touted benefits of health IT, this change ought to make the next iteration.
Interestingly, HHS did not change the ruling about considering multi-campus healthcare systems as one hospital, which forces some individual hospitals to not qualify for the incentive payments. Maybe someone can explain why that wasn't changed, as well as the rationale for treating healthcare systems as one hospital.
Stay tuned for the continuing discussion on what is right and what could be improved with the final ruling.
