Meaningful Use

In a June 26 presentation to CMIOs gathered at the annual AMDIS Physician-Computer Connection Symposium being held in Ojai, California, senior ONC officials Jacob Reider, M.D. and David Muntz addressed medical informaticist concerns over meaningful use.

Recently, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) released programmatic guidance for State HIE grantees who act as Health Information Service Providers (HISPs) for providers to engage in Direct, point-to-point, exchange.

On Wednesday, March 6, in an appearance at the HIMSS Conference in New Orleans, Marilyn Tavenner, R.N. , acting administrator of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) revealed during a presentation at the conference that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)/Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) would delay the release of a preliminary rule for Stage 3 of meaningful use under HITECH until after the end of calendar year 2013, in order for CMS and ONC officials to be able to “digest” input and feedback from healthcare leaders on lessons being learned in Stage 2 of MU. What do you think? Please take our poll!

Direction The federal Health IT Policy Committee met for their monthly meeting this past week in Washington and Meaningful Use Stage 3 was back on the agenda. In under a month, ONC staff culled through more than 500 comments submitted to the Policy Committee that underscored concerns regarding the timing of Stage 3, the growing list of competing priorities for providers and a feeling that more interoperability limitations needed to be addressed.

The Federal Health IT Policy Committee has been working for months on developing measures and objectives for Stage 3 Meaningful Use and in November they shared those thoughts with the wider health IT community of stakeholders for input. Recently, CHIME submitted a response to the HIT Policy Committee, urging caution about the assumed pace and practicality of those Stage 3 measures.