News about Healthcare IT Solutions & Services Industry

ONC Extends Temporary EHR Certification Program Until Summer 2012

According to a notice published on November 3 2011 in the Federal Register, National Health Information Technology Coordinator Farzad Mostashari, M.D., has delayed implementation of the permanent electronic health records meaningful use certification program until at least the summer of 2012.

On June 24, 2010, ONC had published a final rule to establish a temporary certification program for health information technology to ensure that Certified EHR Technology was available for adoption and use by eligible professionals (EPs), eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals (CAHs) for the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs beginning in 2011.

On January 7, 2011, ONC published a final rule to establish a permanent certification program to replace the temporary certification program (which was to sunset on December 31, 2011), or if the permanent certification program is not fully constituted at that time, then upon a subsequent date that is determined to be appropriate by the National Coordinator.

The permanent program was scheduled to start in January 2012, but existing rules give ONC the authority to move the date if the program isn't ready. Six companies have been accredited to conduct certifications under the temporary program, but ONC does not envision having sufficient numbers of certification entities selected and ready for the permanent program until summer 2012.

ONC in June selected the American National Standards Institute as the ONC-Approved Accreditor (ONC-AA) under the permanent program. Once an entity is accredited by the ONC-AA, it then can apply to ONC to become an ONC-Authorized Certification Body, or ONC-ACB. The Office of the National Coordinator anticipates the permanent program will have around six ONC-ACBs.

"We believe that the sunset of the temporary certification program should be tied to the effective data of the final rule that we intend to issue in Summer 2012, which is expected to adopt new and revised standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria for EHR technology in support of the next stage of meaningful use under the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs," according to the notice. "We believe aligning the sunset of the temporary certification program with the effective date of this forthcoming final rule would provide certainty to health care providers, EHR technology developers and other stakeholders, while also ensuring a sufficient number of accredited testing laboratories and ONC-ACBs exist to meet market demand."

For more information:
- read the Health Data Management article

EHR Meaningful Use Attestation Will Continue in 2012

Hospitals and eligible professionals will continue to report clinical quality measures for electronic health records meaningful use via attestation in 2012, just as they must do this year.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services remains unable to electronically accept clinical quality measures. It has confirmed the attestation model for next year in separate final rules setting Medicare's hospital outpatient prospective payment policies and the physician fee schedule. As in 2011, the CQM results must be calculated using certified EHR technology. Both rules are available here now and being published in late November.

CMS, however, is encouraging physicians and hospitals to participate in voluntary pilot programs next year testing electronic CQM submission. Quality measures reported via attestation under the EHR incentive program are not publicly reported and CMS does not plan to publicly report such measures under the electronic submission pilot.

For original complete news article, read here.

Fed Advisors: Too Soon to Add EHR Metadata to Meaningful Use

National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics, a federal advisory body, feels that the Office of the National Coordinator's plan to require use of EHR metadata in Stage 2 of the meaningful use program is premature.

Its members contend that this approach is not in current use and there are no accepted standards for metadata tags. "Consequently, we believe that it is premature to start the rulemaking process for metadata standards without having a better understanding of the current level of maturity of those standards, assessment of the degree to which they have been tested or even used in the industry, a careful analysis of possible unintended consequences, and, more importantly, a policy framework that defines their use."

For complete news, read the news published in Health Data Management here.

Medicaid EHR incentive programs launched

Four more states launched Medicaid electronic-health record incentive programs for providers this month. A total of 21 states have launched such payment programs since the beginning of the year. 

Eligible clinicians and hospitals that treat Medicaid patients in Arizona, Connecticut, Rhode Island and West Virginia may begin registering and receiving incentive payments from their state Medicaid administrators if they meet the program's requirements, according to the CMS. The incentive program—created by the 2009 stimulus law—leaves states to administer their Medicaid incentive program, while the CMS manages the Medicare payment program.

Read more here.

CMS Proposes MU Attestation for Clinical Quality Measures in 2012

Hospitals, critical access hospitals and eligible professionals may continue to report clinical quality measures for meaningful use via attestation in 2012, just as they must do in 2011, according to two proposed rules from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  Also, just like 2011, the measures must be calculated using meaningful use-certified electronic health records.

Read more here.  

Stage 2 Meaningful Use may be Delayed until 2014

Farzad Mostashari, M.D., national coordinator for health information technology, has announced his support for delaying Stage 2 of electronic health records meaningful use by one year to 2014 for providers who attest to Stage 1 in 2011.

Read more here. 

EHR Certification - CCHIT becomes Qualified Certification Agency

HHS today named CCHIT (Certification Commission for Health Information Technology), and the Drummond Group, Austin, Texas, as organizations qualified to test and certify electronic health-record systems as capable of meeting meaningful-use criteria under the federal IT subsidy program established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

"This is a crucial step because it ensures that certified EHR products will be available to support the achievement of the required meaningful-use objectives, that these products will be aligned with one another on key standards and that doctors and hospitals can invest with confidence in these certified systems," David Blumenthal, head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS, said in a news release Monday.

Read here more for more details.

EHR Software - Permanent Certification Plan

The Health IT Policy Committee endorsed comments on a plan by the Office of the National Coordinator to offer permanent certification of electronic health record systems, including a provision to monitor EHRs after they are purchased to ensure providers are installing the proper technology.

The advisory panel okayed this and other features of permanent certification described in a proposed rule published by ONC in March. The ONC is expected to finalize its plan for permanent certification of EHRs sometime before the end of the 2010.

Permanent certification describes requirements for testing whether EHRs deliver the functions required for meaningful use. A separate temporary certification plan has been designed containing a more limited set of requirements to help providers get EHRs up and running in the first year of the meaningful use program.

EHR Software - Labeling To Signify Certification

The federal Health IT Policy Committee has recommended that health IT vendors use labels to clarify that their EHR Software is certified to satisfy first-stage requirements for meaningful use in order to ward off potential confusion among buyers about whether systems they are considering will qualify them for the incentive program.

Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has recently asked for comments about its plan to offer "temporary" certification of health IT products and systems which is designed to qualify health IT systems for first stage of the meaningful use plan, which begins next year. A permanent plan will be developed to certify health IT products for future phases of meaningful use.

Under the proposed rule, vendors would be directed to label their products with the date the product was certified. The committee also recommended that technology that is certified during 2010 should contain a label specifying that it has been certified for Stage 1 requirements only. 

To help providers keep track of certified products, the committee also urged ONC and certifying organizations to maintain a Web site listing the names of vendors and their product version numbers that have received certification.

ePrescribing Gets Cheaper : Surescripts announces significant price reduction

Surescripts, The Nation's E-Prescription Network, today announced that it has lowered the cost of e-prescribing services used millions of times each day by physicians, pharmacists and payers nationwide. After six years of no price increases, the announcement illustrates how replacing a manual, paper-based process with health information technology creates a more efficient and, ultimately, lower-cost means of providing care.

Surescripts operates the nation's largest e-prescription network and supports a rapidly expanding ecosystem of healthcare organizations nationwide. Surescripts was founded on the principles of neutrality, transparency, interoperability, education, collaboration and quality. Surescripts' e-prescribing services allow physicians to electronically send prescriptions from their offices to any of 52,000 retail pharmacies and six of the largest mail-order pharmacies. In addition, Surescripts provides physicians with electronic access to their patients' prescription benefit and prescription history, which helps to improve safety and enables doctors to prescribe medications with the lowest out-of-pocket cost to the patient. Beginning Jan. 1, 2010, Surescripts reduced what pharmacies, pharmacy vendors and pharmacy benefit managers pay for e-prescribing.

Read full press release here.