'Meaningful use' progress hinges on stakeholder input

September 20, 2010 | By Neil Versel

The Health IT Policy Committee has begun work in earnest on Stage 2 and 3 requirements for "meaningful use" of health IT, but some members of the federal advisory panel would like to see faster progress.

"We are now firmly into the next season of meaningful use," national health IT coordinator Dr. David Blumenthal said a committee meeting last week, Healthcare IT News reports. "We're dealing with the long-range success of our enterprise."

The panel's workgroup on meaningful use will meet Wednesday to develop draft requirements for Stage 2 of the Medicare-Medicaid EMR incentive program (2013-14) based on stakeholder input and comments made at public hearings like last week's meeting, according to workgroup co-chair Dr. George Hripcsak. Hripcsak, who chairs the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University in New York, says the workgroup on meaningful use will submit recommendations to the HIT Policy Committee on Oct. 20 and the following month, HHS will issue a formal request for information from the general public on how to structure the regulations.

While the HHS is not required to accept or follow the workgroup's recommendations, Blumenthal said the public should expect that document to be a good indication of what the final rules will say. However, the timeline for developing final regulations remains tight. According to Blumenthal, "There will be 18 months of warning, there won't be 18 months of certainty," about Stage 2.

That statement may not sit well with vendors, Healthcare IT News reports, because they likely will need to modify their products to meet new federal requirements.

Workgroup chair Dr. Paul Tang said that vendors and providers alike should have "some idea" by April of what to expect for 2013 and beyond, based early experiences with Stage 1 regulations, which take effect Oct. 1 for hospitals and Jan. 1 for physicians. "If no one is submitting data for Stage 1, that will be a signal that we don't want to be adding much more for Stage 2," Tang said.

To learn more:
- have a look at this Healthcare IT News story