On April, 15, 2015, HHS proposed significant restructuring of the Meaningful Use rules for Stages 1 & 2. Overall this is good news for healthcare providers, many of whom struggled under the tough Stage 2 rules. Here is a more detailed look at the changes:
Measures that have been eliminated
- Record Demographics
- Record Vital Signs
- Record Smoking Status
- Clinical Summaries
- Structured Lab Results
- Patient List
- Patient Reminders
- Summary of Care – portions
- Electronic Notes
- Imaging Results
- Family Health History
Measures that have been simplified
The following measures have been eased or simplified:
- The Summary of Care measure has been eased to reduce the number of electronic transmissions to other providers from 50% of referrals to 10% of referrals, and additional flexibility has been provided regarding how this transmission must occur.
- The Patient Electronic Access Objective has been greatly eased to reduce the number of patients who must view, download or transmit their information from a portal from 5% of patients seen to a single patient.
- The Secure Messaging measure has been reduced from 5% of patients to a YES/NO measure requiring only that a secure messaging capability be available to patients.
- The Privacy and Security Objective has been slightly simplified to limit the scope of the required risk analysis and subsequent mitigation to protecting the data in the electronic record software.
- The Public Health Reporting measures have been consolidated into a single objective with restructured language and exclusions. A provider must complete two of these measures unless exclusions apply.
Stage 1 Eliminated
Stage 1 and Stage 2 have been consolidated into a single set of measures. For providers who participated the first time in 2014 and/or participate for the first time in 2015, for 2015 only an alternate set of measures is available that is similar to the current Stage 1 rules.
Where is a list that reflects all of the changes to the objectives and measures?
Eagle Consulting has prepared a summary of the proposed changes. Click here for the details.
When will final rules be released?
The federal rulemaking process requires at least a 60 day comment period after release of a proposed rule before a final rule may be published. So the rule will be published no sooner than June 14, 2015. The government will likely do its best to publish a final rule as soon as possible after that date. It would be optimistic to expect a final rule in July 2015.
Editor’s Note: Subsequent to the publication of this article, CMS has renamed the “Meaningful Use” programs and MIPS “Advancing Care Information” category to “Promoting Interoperability”.
