Final rule on meaningful use finally released

Less than three months before the start of fiscal 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has finally released its final rule on “meaningful use,” which will drive the health IT industry’s installation of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) under last year’s HITECH Act.

(To the right, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius, from the department’s Web site.)

The release was done at a Webcast and included Donald Berwick, now director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

A summary of the rule has also been published at the New England Journal of Medicine, but the main change from the initial proposal, released in December, is that requirements have been split between a “core” group of required objectives and a “menu set” of procedures so clinics can get partial credit.

The first vendor press release on the new rules came from Allscripts, whose CEO, Glen Tullman, was an Obama adviser on health care in 2008 and served on the advisory committee that helped come up with the rule. More reaction is expected to follow, and we will cover it at ZDNet.

Along with the meaningful use rule a final rule on certification of systems was also published. The companies which will do the certifying have yet to be chosen, after which vendors will have to line up to assure customers of stimulus cash.

Now that the rules for getting that cash are in place, vendors and customers are in a race against time. The first set of deadlines will be based on six months of use during fiscal 2011, which means software or gear needs to be in place by next April 1 to meet the deadline.

And we don’t even know who will certify whether the gear meets requirements. But at least we know the rules under which both certification and use will be measured.

Source: - http://www.zdnet.com/blog/healthcare/final-rule-on-meaningful-use-finally-released/3814

CMS: We'll publish our 'Meaningful Use' final rule by July 14

CMS: We'll publish our 'Meaningful Use' final rule by July 14
July 1, 2010 — 12:49pm ET | By Wendy Johnson

Many dates have been thrown around regarding when CMS plans to publish its final rule for meaningful use. This highly anticipated regulation, of course, will spell out how providers and organizations can become eligible for HITECH's electronic health record incentive payments.

Some news outlets have reported that July 13 is the magic date. That sounds about right, give or take a few days. FierceEMR spoke with a CMS official directly involved in writing and publishing the final regulation, and she assures us that although there's no "official" publication date (CMS missed its own self-imposed June 30 deadline), "I would be very surprised if it's published any later than July 14."

"We hoped to have it out by the end of June, but it's looking more like mid-July," the official told us this week. "There are so many moving parts and so many people are involved. This is a long regulation." No doubt! The proposed rule was thicker than many novels. We expect nothing less from the final reg.

CMS also plans to unveil its plan for aligning its Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) with the EHR incentive program in mid-July. "We propose to include many ARRA core clinical quality measures in the PQRI program, to demonstrate meaningful use of EHR and quality of care furnished to individuals," CMS states in an advanced copy of the proposed reg, CMIO magazine reports. "We propose the selection of these measures to meet the requirements of planning the integration of PQRI and EHR reporting."

Source: - http://www.fierceemr.com/story/cms-well-publish-our-meaningful-use-final-rule-july-14/2010-07-01?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal