Initial 'meaningful use' standards to be simple, as deadline is in sight

The bad news is, everyone's a little antsy while waiting for final rules on "meaningful use" of EMRs. The good news is, HHS seems to be making progress toward defining the term that will determine who qualifies for federal stimulus funding for health IT. Plus, it looks like federal officials are listening to what the healthcare community has to say. (Lest there was any doubt, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology set up giant poster boards at last week's American Medical Informatics Association meeting for people to write their thoughts on meaningful use.)

The news that HHS was on target to publish its proposed definition of meaningful use by the end of the year echoed from coast to coast. Government Health IT reports that Tony Trenkel director of the CMS Office of e-Health Standards and Services, made this statement at a meeting of the National Council on Vital and Health Statistics in Washington on Thursday. And we personally heard national health IT coordinator Dr. David Blumenthal offer the same assurance at AMIA in San Francisco last Monday.

Meanwhile, the implementation workgroup of the federal Health IT Standards Committee said it would listen to the public sentiment that early standards should be made as simple as possible in order to encourage health IT adoption. Any tightening of requirements would occur for the 2013 and 2015 standards, corresponding to the third and fifth year of a healthcare provider's participation in the EMR incentive program. HHS has said that providers likely will be able to meet the 2011 standards as late as 2014, though anyone who begins after 2012 will not be eligible for the full Medicare or Medicaid bonus.

For more:
- check out this Government Health IT article on meaningful use
- read this Government Health IT story on the Health IT Standards Committee meeting
- see why one veteran HIT observer calls Blumenthal's general silence "deafening," in this iHealthBeat column

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