News Feature | February 12, 2014

MU Stage 3 In The Works

Source: Health IT Outcomes
Rebecca McCurry

By Rebecca McCurry

Meaningful Use Stage 3 draft to be submitted on February 14th

The plan for Stage 3 Meaningful Use is currently being drafted and is expected to ready for submission to the Health IT Policy Committee on the Feb. 14, reports Healthcare IT News. While the ONC’s Meaningful Use Work Group “developed a number of ideas that have consensus, clinical quality measures may not be as easy to include in digital systems as previously thought, and Congress may end up stepping in.

"While health IT stakeholders consider the potential challenges of Stage 3 over the next year, Congress may end up coming back into the process with new ideas - and redesign the entire system for how Medicare pays and provides incentives for physicians." The article further explains, "In March, the HIT Policy Committee, headed by Karen DeSalvo, MD, will be approving Stage 3 recommendations and by this time next year HHS will be working on final rules."

As described by the Health IT.gov Meaningful Use Work Group, additional goals for Stage 3 include:

  • "Address key gaps ... in EHR functionality that the market will not drive alone, but are essential for all providers
  • Simplify MU objectives where higher level objective implies compliance with subsumed process objectives
  • Consider alternative pathway where meeting performance and/or improvement thresholds deems satisfaction of subset of relevant MU functionality implicitly required to achieve performance/improvement"

Consumer Partnership for eHealth offered its assessment of Stage 3, writing, “The Meaningful Use program must incorporate infrastructure and uses of certified EHRs that will reduce health disparities as a measurable health outcome. To this end, we have come together to create an evidence-based action plan for leveraging the EHR Incentive Program to reduce health disparities."

The new action plan also opines, "It's impossible to achieve better health outcomes and significantly reduce healthcare costs without tackling health disparities, which are pervasive and a costly problem. We have the chance to leverage Stage 3 of the Meaningful Use program to make significant progress in addressing disparities."

SOURCE: University of Mississippi

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