Meaningful Use
CMS is now calling for clinicians, hospitals, and critical access hospitals to use a 90-day EHR reporting period in 2016 - down from a full calendar year for returning participants in the government's EHR Incentive Program. They also proposed lowering the bar for achieving Stage 3 objectives, eliminating the Clinical Decision Support and Computerized Provider Order Entry objectives and measures for eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals.
One week after Andy Slavitt said meaningful use would be replaced soon, the acting Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator and national coordinator Karen DeSalvo made it clear that the changes would take time and that providers must still follow the current program.
A blanket hardship exception from 2015's meaningful use reimbursement penalties passed both the House and Senate last week as part of the Patient Access and Medicare Protection Act, offering providers wider latitude for securing exemptions from possible fines.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center, one of the pioneers in building its own software systems, announced it would switch to an Epic electronic health record in November 2017, having weighed the merits of both Epic and Cerner, the hospital announced on Friday.
Congress on Wednesday is considering legislation to allow physicians working in ambulatory surgical centers to receive the same payment incentives for meaningful use of electronic health records as doctors in other settings.
The American Academy of Family Physicians launched an online portal to make it easier for its doctor members to demand Congress push back Stage 3 of the meaningful use regulation.
The new rules will ease the reporting burden for providers, support interoperability, and improve patient outcomes, according to CMS.
Banner Health will install Cerner for electronic health records software at two hospitals they recently acquired from the University of Arizona by 2018, the healthcare provider announced. The 28-hospital integrated healthcare system already uses Cerner EHR in its other facilities.
One system may be a challenge for some organizations, but it is imperative that clinical and revenue sides align, experts say.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will lift the rate it pays inpatient hospitals in 2016 by 0.9 percent, the agency announced Friday, as long as facilities participate in the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting Program and demonstrate meaningful use through the use of electronic health records.