Meaningful Use
Due to the three-staged structure of the meaningful use timeline, eligible providers and hospitals have tended to approach the process in a literal, rigid way. But there's a change afoot, which some may call MU 2.0.
Federal, state and local governments have long used tax deductions and credits as policy tools to direct individual and organizational behavior. We take it for granted that incentives work -- the debates on government incentives tend to cluster around their ethical use or the economics involved.
The sheer volume of uncoordinated measures are overwhelming clinicians and until they are narrowed down and made uniform across all sectors of healthcare, the task of improving care will remain elusive. So say former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and former HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt.
In efforts to guarantee patient access to their lab tests, the nation's largest pharmacies are now promising to adopt the Blue Button personal health record.
The ONC's Meaningful Use Workgroup will submit draft recommendations for Stage 3 of the Meaningful Use EHR Incentive Program on Feb. 14. So far, the workgroup has developed a number of ideas that have consensus, but clinical quality measures may not be as easy to include in digital systems as previously thought.
CMS is extending the deadline for eligible professionals to attest to meaningful use for the Medicare EHR Incentive Program 2013 reporting year from 11:59 p.m. EST on Feb. 28, 2014, to 11:59 p.m. EST March 31, 2014.
The former chief financial officer of a Texas hospital was recently indicted for wrongly claiming nearly $1 million in federal electronic health record incentives.
Strong momentum continues for the meaningful use program as CMS revealed that it has disbursed more than $19 billion in reimbursement incentives. There were 440, 998 registered providers participating in the federal electronic health record incentive program as of the end of 2013, with $19.2 billion paid out in incentives, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
CCHIT surprised many in the industry this past week when it announced it would be bowing out of the EHR certification game to focus on advisory services and thought leadership. Alisa Ray, executive director and CEO of the standards and testing pioneer, spoke with Healthcare IT News about the rationale behind that decision.
Blackford Middleton, MD, first came across the term "clinical decision support" in 1983. Today, Middleton continues his decades-long work on CDS and hoping the federal meaningful use program can help make clinical decision support systems more accessible, intelligent and interoperable.