The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) plans to announce on July 13 its final rule on the definition and requirements for demonstrating meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs), giving providers certainty about what they have to do to qualify for Medicare and Medicaid incentives under the HITECH Act.
The announcement follows a period of public comment after the proposed rule was published in January.
At the same time, the Office of the National Health IT Coordinator will issue its final rule for standards and certification of EHRs, according to the Health and Human Services Department. ONC also published its interim final rule on standards and certification in January.
With the standards and certification requirements finalized, vendors can be sure that they equip their EHR products with the features necessary for providers to be capable of meeting meaningful use.
In its proposed meaningful use rule, CMS required 25 measures for providers and 23 for hospitals to show they were using EHRs to improve healthcare outcomes in order to qualify for payments. CMS has grouped measure by healthcare priorities, including quality and safety, patient engagement, care coordination, public health, and privacy and security.
CMS will set meaningful use criteria over three stages between now and 2013, setting the bar progressively higher for providers to improve patient outcomes. This first stage of criteria described in the final rule focuses on collecting data electronically, sharing information with other providers and patients, and reporting quality measures to CMS, according to agency officials.
