HHS hints at possible 'meaningful use' changes

With the first full week of 2010 now behind us, it's becoming clear that the proposed "meaningful use" regulations published Dec. 30 indeed merely represent a proposal, and that the final rules certainly could change. On Friday, a workgroup of the federal Health IT Policy Committee indicated a willingness to consider the effect of the regulations on physicians trying to earn Medicare and Medicaid bonus payments starting in 2011.

Notably, CMS is considering dialing back the number of quality measures physicians will be required to report on. "We would certainly try to reduce them as we get the comments back in," Tony Trenkle, director of the CMS Office of e-Health Standards, said at the meeting, Government Health IT reports. "The idea was to report out a suite of specialty measures and then invite comments for that. We are going to be looking at what they say about the measures--their operational readiness and their appropriateness and how they relate to health outcomes."

But the workgroup indicated it was more likely to consider "philosophical" comments from the public rather than on making specific changes to the proposal. The Health IT Policy Committee will make recommendations to CMS and to national health IT coordinator Dr. David Blumenthal, but the final regulations on meaningful use will come from CMS. The Office of the National Coordinator is responsible for related rules on data standards and certification of health IT products. The full committee next meets on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the private sector continues to weigh in on the proposal. The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, ahem, chimed in by saying the reporting requirements, certification standards and tight deadlines could hinder compliance efforts. "Adequate time to understand the impact of these new systems and to implement them, are some of my secondary concerns," Baylor Health Care System CIO David Muntz says in a CHIME statement. "My primary concern is the time and effort required to achieve successful organizational change management."

Among vendors, NextGen Healthcare Information Systems says HHS needs to offer more guidance to providers, and the Horsham, Pa.-based developer of ambulatory EMRs announced the availability of various compliance-related resources. Competitor Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions became the latest vendor to offer customers a guarantee of meaningful use, as well as some new financing options.

For more:
- read this Government Health IT story
- see this statement from CHIME
- check out this NextGen press release
- read the Allscripts announcement

Related Articles:
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Meaningful use to require 5 CDS rules but not progress notes in 2011
Blumenthal: Meaningful use will focus on goals of care, not technology