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*Attestation begins, but will it tell us much?
“*If we don’t pay attention to what happens in Stage 1, we could completely debilitate this process in Stage 2″
*”Meaningful Use was written very much for the vended applications”
*Defining success for the Meaningful Use program
One of my biggest frustrations in past jobs was the way meetings were handled. Being very much the kind of person who needs concrete results to feel like the time invested has been well spent, I bristled at meetings whose only deliverable seemed to be the scheduling of another meeting to “revisit the topic.” Now, […]
Much of what will become Meaningful Use Stage 2 can be found in the recently released Stage 1, according to comments from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Tony Trenkle, who spoke during this month’s HIT Policy Committee meeting. Meaningful Use Stage 2, he said, will expand on Stage 1 by making the current “menu” set part of future core requirements. Trenkle, director of the CMS Office of e-Health Standards and Services, said the organization also wanted to get certain administrative requirements — which were included in the NPRM but dropped from the final regulation— along higher CPOE levels, into Stage 2.
The final Meaningful Use regulations issued today by the Department of Health and Human Services jettison a proposed all-or-nothing program in favor of a more flexible approach. According to the HITECH Act — part of the massive American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — healthcare providers and hospitals are eligible for stimulus monies if they become meaningful users of certified electronic health record (EHR) technology. The program — which offers eligible professionals up to $44,000 under Medicare and $63,750 under Medicaid, and hospitals millions — has been developed by HHS/CMS and ONC over the last 14 months. Based on how many providers quality, the federal tab could range from $9.7 to $27.4 billion, according to CMS.
Earlier this week, Pamela McNutt, SVP and CIO of Methodist Health System in Dallas, gave a presentation entitled “Meeting Stage 1 Meaningful Use: A View from a Healthcare System,” at the AHA’s Annual Membership Meeting in Washington, D.C. McNutt — chair of CHIME’s Policy Steering Committee and former chair of the organization’s Advocacy Leadership Team […]
