“Our recovery plan will invest in electronic health records and new technologies that will reduce errors, bring down costs, ensure privacy and save lives.” President Obama, Address to Joint Session of Congress, February 2009
Yes, it is true that is when it all started. After lot of discussions and just about a year and a half later, on July 13th, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made key announcements regarding Meaningful Use (MU) and Stimulus money. Though I will cover various aspects of MU in many subsequent posts, it is best to visit the URL http://www.cms.gov for a comprehensive understanding. (Warning: It is quite a read! So plan on spending few hours for few days to get most out of it!)
We may not completely agree on how the stimulus, E HR adoption and MU will all play out in the long term, but it is true that there is a new excitement (I may add, much needed!) in the EHR marketplace and physician community is busy trying to select an E HR vendor, put together an implementation plan and trying to be ready when time comes to collect Federal Stimulus dollars- all over the country. Let us look at few facts:
- As much as $27 billion has been committed in incentive payments over ten years. Eligible Professionals (EP) may receive as much as $44,000 under Medicare and $63,750 under Medicaid.
- Hospitals may receive millions of dollars for implementation and meaningful use of certified EHRs underm both Medicare and Medicaid as well.
- The final rules divides the requirements into a “Core” group of requirements that must be met, plus an additional “Menu” of procedures from which providers may choose.
- Eligible professionals and hospitals must successfully demonstrate meaningful use of certified electronic health record technology every year they participate in the program(Medicare). Eligible professionals and hospitals may qualify for incentive payments for the adoption, implementation, upgrade or the demonstration of meaningful use in their first year of participation. They must successfully demonstrate meaningful use for the remaining years they participate in the program(Medicaid).
- Proposed rules expect eligible professionals to meet 25 requirements in their use of EHRs. 20 of the objectives must be completed to qualify for an incentive payment. 15 are core objectives that are required, and the remaining 5 objectives may be chosen from the list of 10 menu set objectives.
- For Hospitals, there are a total of 24 meaningful use objectives. 14 are core objectives that are required, and the remaining 5 objectives may be chosen from the list of 10 menu set objectives.
The criteria for meaningful use will be staged in three steps over the course of the next five years. Stage 1 sets the baseline for electronic data capture and information sharing. Stage 2 (est. 2013) and Stage 3 (est. 2015) will continue to expand on this baseline and be developed through future rule making.
There are detailed regulations with regards to penalties for not adopting EHRs. For instance, Medicare payments may be reduced to 99% in 2015, and reduced further to 97% by 2017 for practices that have not implemented a certified EHR. Also, after 2015, incentive payments will end.
There will be many new bodies certifying E HRs in the months and years to come. And, it is certain that CCHIT will be one of the certifying bodies. It is important to understand that CCHIT is not the same thing as Meaningful Use (MU). MU can be understood best as a subset of CCHIT certification.
Isn’t that a lot of information to digest? Though fair amount of regulations have been announced and finalized in the last few months, this will continue to be a dynamic environment. For one thing, E HR penetration in the clinical segment (especially smaller practices and solo practioners) remains quite low, and a higher adoption will breed new ideas and ways to practice medicine that no one has thought before. More to follow..
More reads. .
No comments:
Post a Comment