Officials Preparing Adjustments to Meaningful Use Final Rule

CMS soon will release modifications for certain provisions in the final rule for Stage 1 of the meaningful use ehr incentive program, Government Health IT reports.

Under the 2009 economic stimulus package, health care providers who demonstrate meaningful use of certified electronic health records can qualify for incentive payments through Medicaid and Medicare.

Tony Trenkle — director of the Office of e-Health Standards and Services at CMS — said the adjustments to the meaningful use criteria currently are undergoing a federal clearance process, which is the final step before publication. Trenkle spoke on Wednesday during a Health IT Policy Committee meeting.

Trenkle added that CMS also will release guidance for health care providers on how to meet quality measures in the incentive program.

Discussion of Stages 2, 3

During the meeting, the Policy Committee also considered what incentive requirements to include in the next stages of the meaningful use program.

Committee members discussed whether Stage 2 meaningful use requirements — which are expected to go into effect in 2013 — should be incrementally built on requirements from Stage 1, or if there should be a set of larger steps framed around measuring and improving patient outcomes.

Paul Tang — chair of the meaningful use work group and chief medical information officer at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation — said the committee would prefer to establish the Stage 3 goals for 2015 first and then backtrack to form Stage 2 requirements.

Committee member Latanya Sweeney — director of the data privacy lab at Carnegie Mellon University — said future meaningful use criteria should incorporate privacy regulations (Mosquera, Government Health IT, 10/20).

National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal said that the rollout of Stage 1 of the meaningful use criteria “was very rushed” (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 10/21). He added that the next stages should focus on infrastructure and interoperability.

Time Frame

Tang said that the meaningful use work group aims to have draft requirements for Stages 2 and 3 by Nov. 19, adding that it will revise the draft after taking comments from the full Policy Committee.

He said final recommendations could be submitted to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT by the third quarter of 2011, while CMS could release a notice of proposed rulemaking on the next stages by the fourth quarter of next year (Manos, Healthcare IT News, 10/21).

Source : http://www.myemrstimulus.com/officials-preparing-adjustments-to-meaningful-use-final-rule/

HIMSS Analytics Names First Korean Stage 7 Hospital

SEOUL, South Korea – Seoul National University Bundang Hospital (SNUBH) has reached Stage 7 on the HIMSS Analytics Electronic Medical Records Adoption Model (EMRAM) scale. It is the first hospital outside of the United States to achieve the Stage 7 designation, and the only hospital in Asia to do so.

The EMR Adoption Model provides a leadership guide for IT adoption in healthcare. The higher the stage, the more advanced the IT application coverts to. Stage 7 represents a totally paperless environment.

Only 1 percent of US hospitals rank at the Stage 7 achievement level on the EMRAM. At this stage, care coordination across the hospital is improved using EMR, developing better health information exchanges, and data warehousing for population health improvement.

The Seoul National University Bundang Hospital reached Stage 7 with:

• Almost all medical orders entered by physicians.
• Ninety percent of physicians enter patient health information into the EHR, using structured templates that generate data, allowing clinical decision support for clinical guidance.
• Efficiency gained through automation, such as relying on only four transcriptionists to support 910 inpatient beds and over 4,000 outpatient visits per day.
• The Medical Imaging department is fully digitized producing 1.2 terabytes of data per month for 70,000 radiologic exams per month.
• The Closed-Loop Medication Administration (CLMA) process has the highest level of patient safety for bar-coded medications through RFID technology
• The hospital uses clinical data warehousing for developing over 250 quality clinical indicators and 98 critical pathways.
• A Health Information Exchange exists between the hospital and 36 private clinics in its region.
  

“The Seoul National University Bundang Hospital is an excellent example of healthcare IT adoption to improve the quality and efficiency of care while improving patient and employee satisfaction,” said John P. Hoyt, executive vice president of Organizational Services at HIMSS. “We congratulate the hospital and its information technology team for creating this environment for its patients, employees and medical staff.”

HIMSS Analytics is beginning to collect data on electronic health record implementation from all hospitals in Korea. More information on Stage 7 recognition is available on the HIMSS Analytics website.

Source : http://www.emrspecialists.com/2010/12/himss-analytics-names-first-korean-stage-7-hospital/

EMR-Driven Disease Management Reduces Mortality, Costs

EMRs keep on proving their mettle in the area of care coordination.

The latest evidence comes from Kaiser Permanente Colorado, which improved outcomes by mining its EMR and electronic disease registries to match patients with heart disease to clinical pharmacy specialists and “personalized” nurses. In a study published in the November edition of the journal Pharmacotherapy, Kaiser researchers reported an 89 percent reduction in mortality, as well as cost reductions of $60 per day for cardiac patients enrolled in a disease management program, as compared to a control group.

The program, called the Kaiser Permanente Collaborative Cardiac Care Service, can notify pharmacy specialists if a patient doesn’t pick up a prescription or if a cholesterol test reveals a need to change medications, for example. The pharmacists or nurses then can contact individual patients to help them make the necessary adjustments to their treatment.

Rather than seeing costs increase due to the extra service, healthcare expenditures declined significantly for patients in the program. Hospitalization costs averaged $19 per day for participants, vs. $69 per day for those receiving standard treatment. Kaiser also reported small cost savings on physician office visits and medications due to the better coordination.

“This program works because it is a team approach,” study co-author Dr. John Merenich, medical director of the Clinical Pharmacy Cardiac Risk Service at KP Colorado, tells Healthcare IT News. “Our teams of nurses and clinical pharmacists, as well as our health information technology, require significant investment. We always knew it was the right investment because it saved lives. Now we know it’s also the right investment because it provides the highest quality care at a lower cost. This is the value people have been looking for in health care.”

Source : http://www.emrspecialists.com/2010/11/emr-driven-disease-management-reduces-mortality-costs/

Wound EMR Could Reduce Amputation Rates For Diabetics

EMR (Electronic medical records) specifically for wounds could substantially cut amputation rates for diabetes patients with foot ulcers, a study recently presented at the American College of Surgeons 96th Annual Clinical Congress determined.

Records pulled from an online wound EMR (OWEMR) system set up at by Dr. Jason Maggi at New York University Langone Medical Center’s Department of Surgery over a six-month span showed that there were up to 137 variables for each record, reports Medscape Medical News. Automated alerts sent out to all doctors involved with a particular patient’s care help doctors to sort through that information and integrate quantitative measures like healing rates in real time, according to Maggi, the study’s senior author.

“Effective management of this information and analysis of data in a timely fashion can mean the difference between limb salvage and amputation,” Maggi said, according to Medscape.

The OWEMR combined information like medications, medical history and lab results with digital photos of patient progress to help doctors “centralize information” onto a single page.

Dr. Danielle Katz, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery at SUNY Upstate Medical University who moderated Maggi’s presentation, hailed the study as potentially being “the future of medicine.”

Said Katz, “I think more and more there will be a push to have applicable practice guidelines [and] methods for tracking outcomes, and I think this really demonstrates a very potentially useful tool.”

Source : http://www.emrspecialists.com/2010/10/wound-emr-could-reduce-amputation-rates-for-diabetics/

Mayo Clinic Using EMRs To Reveal Genetic Predisposition To Disease

EMRs are moving into genomics, at least at the Mayo Clinic.

In a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, Mayo physicians showed how EMRs were able to help them determine the genetic variants that make certain people more likely to develop peripheral artery disease.

With consent of patients, researchers tapped the Mayo database of more than 8 million Electronic Medical Records to pinpoint clinical variables that could indicate a predisposition to PAD, a task that would be difficult if not impossible with paper records, Healthcare IT News reports. The physicians were able to confirm several cases of the disease and to identify phenocopies–traits found in confirmed cases–of atherosclerotic PAD.

“Although manual abstraction of medical records can provide high-quality data, for large studies such as genetic association studies, manual review of medical records can be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming,” the study says. “Our study demonstrates … several significant advantages over traditional approaches to genomic medicine research by simplifying logistics, reducing timelines and overall costs through efficient data acquisition.”

The team, from Mayo’s Divisions of Cardiovascular Diseases and Biomedical Informatics and Statistics, said that structured EMR data from large institutions “offer great potential for diverse research studies, including those related to understanding the genetic bases of common diseases.”

Source : http://www.emrspecialists.com/2010/09/mayo-clinic-using-emrs-to-reveal-genetic-predisposition-to-disease/

Detroit Medical Center pegs EMR savings at $5M a year

DETROIT – Detroit Medical Center executives say they have achieved improved patient safety and saved $5 million to boot, thanks to DMC’s system-wide electronic medical system.

It is the second year in a row in which computer-based healthcare information processing created major improvements in quality of care and cost-savings for DMC’s eight hospitals, officials said.

The windfall in savings - triggered by highly effective electronic monitoring of critical tasks such as treating pressure ulcers and preventing medication errors - resulted in a healthy return on investment, they said.

The $50 million system powered by Kansas City, Mo-based Cerner Corp, has gone online throughout the DMC in gradual stages over a 12-year period, starting in 1998.

“The latest numbers are in, and we continue to see great strides in improving quality, treating patients more quickly and preventing error, which translates to dollar savings as well,” said Chief Nursing Officer Patricia Natale. “This work with these results is very exciting.”

“The savings are only part of the story,” she added, “because EMR is also a major step forward on the road to better quality of patient care. Thanks to EMR, we’re now seeing a dramatic reduction in the length of hospital stays due to pressure sores, along with a dramatic reduction of drug errors through EMR-enabled medication scanning.”

“The latest surveys show that EMR has helped to reduce medication errors by up to 75 percent,” said DMC Chief Medical Information Officer Leland Babitch, MD. “Obviously, that’s a major gain for patients - especially given the fact that medication errors account for the majority of accidental deaths and injuries at U.S. hospitals.”

The U.S. Institute of Medicine has estimated that up to 100,000 patients die as a result of hospital errors annually.

Treating pressure ulcers

The impact of the electronic medical record system on the treatment of pressure ulcers was especially noticeable, said DMC quality-of-care administrators.

They noted that the chronic sores often require extended hospital stays and thus drive up costs. But the most recent DMC Patient Care Services study of severe pressure ulcer cases showed that close EMR monitoring of bedsores reduced the average length of stay required to treat them by nearly three full days last year, compared with the average length of ulcer-triggered stays before EMR monitoring began in 2008.

The DMC study concluded that the reduction in the length of pressure ulcer-related hospital stays - in a system that admits more than 75,000 patients each year - was now helping to generate more than $4.5 million in yearly cost savings.

“The data on electronic medical records and patient safety and quality of care are clear and convincing by now,” said DMC Vice President for Quality and Safety Michelle Schreiber, MD. “Those data demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that EMR is an extremely powerful tool when it comes to protecting patients from hospital errors.

“But EMR is also proving to be an effective method for promoting quality of care - and the new numbers on bedsores and length of stays show how computer-based recordkeeping helps caregivers to take better care of patients day in and day out.”

In spite of the savings to be had from hospital-based EMR, however, recent studies show that the majority of U.S. hospitals have either failed to implement top-to-bottom EMR systems - or are cutting back on information technology (IT) programs already in place.

As of August 2010, fewer than 4 percent of U.S. hospitals had implemented the level of system-wide electronic patient recordkeeping that is now in place at the DMC. In addition, a recent study at the University of Michigan School of Medicine showed that more than one-fourth of the nation’s recession-affected hospitals have been cutting back on their already existing IT programs.

The cash-strapped hospitals were slashing IT budgets, reported the study in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, in spite of the fact that the Obama administration has recently made available more than $2.73 billion in Medicare/Medicaid bonuses for clinicians and hospitals that spend to improve their electronic medical records systems.

“The DMC has spent $50 million on building a powerful EMR system over the past five or six years, said Michael Duggan, president and CEO of the Detroit Medical Center, “and we did it because we like to think of ourselves as the ‘hospital of the future’ - as a state-of-the-art healing center where patients know they can get the best healthcare available anywhere today. ”

“At the same time, the ability to greatly reduce healthcare costs via electronic medical records is an added bonus - which makes implementing EMR a win-win situation for everyone involved.”

Source : http://www.emrspecialists.com/2010/09/detroit-medical-center-pegs-emr-savings-at-5m-a-year/

EMR retrieval tool full of potential

BOSTON – Radiologists’ use of an advanced search tool that aims at improving the way they retrieve and sort data from an electronic medical record has the potential to benefit many other departments, according to one of the authors of a new study.

The Queriable Patient Inference Dossier (QPID) search engine was initially developed in 2005 in response to the need for radiologists at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston to quickly have access to information about their patients.

Michael Zalis, MD, lead author of the study, which was published in the August issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology, says the system serves as an adjunct to the hospital’s EMR system.

“Even in its simplest implementation, the presence of an EMR system presents considerable challenges to the radiologist,” he explains. “For example, radiologists commonly encounter each patient with little prior familiarity with the patient’s clinical situation. As a result, the time and effort required to retrieve, review, and assimilate EMR data relevant for the case at hand becomes an important consideration for use of EMR in busy clinical practice.”

The QPID system currently serves 500 registered users at Massachusetts General Hospital and posts 7,000 to 10,000 thousand pages of medical record data daily, according to hospital officials.

“[QPID] It was developed separately from the EMR and operates in a read-only fashion in relation to it,” Zalis says. “Thus QPID is not a source of new EMR data, but serves as a method to extract useful patterns of EMR data from the separately curated clinical data repositories at our institution,”

He says this tool has the ability to extend the radiologist’s awareness of a patient’s clinical history and care record, which he says can lead to better value, quality, and safety of practice.

“The potential impact of advanced EMR search tools is by no means limited to radiology and in fact many departments in the hospital and outpatient clinic may benefit from these capabilities,” Zalis says. “In our own institution, with the QPID search system, we have catalyzed a growing base of enthusiastic users, many of whom have contributed their own insights and content to the system’s catalogue of search modules, each of which is potentially applicable at more than one site. The future for advanced search of the EMR looks to be exciting and full of potential.”

Source : http://www.emrspecialists.com/2010/08/emr-retrieval-tool-full-of-potential/

HHS sends final meaningful-use rules to OMB for review

By Joseph Conn

HHS has sent its final meaningful-use rules and certification criteria for electronic health-record system testing to the Office of Management and Budget—typically one of the last bureaucratic hurdles before rules are released. The criteria are called for under the EHR subsidy program established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

OMB received a copy of the final rule of the “meaningful use” criteria from the CMS Monday, according to the posting on the website of its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

The White House budget authority also received a copy of the final rule on an initial set of standards, implementation specifications and certification criteria from HHS on July 2.

Under the Medicare provisions of the stimulus law, to receive an estimated $14 billion to $27 billion in federal subsidies for EHR purchases, hospitals and qualifying office-based physicians must use certified EHRs in a “meaningful manner.”

Robert Tennant, the Washington, D.C.-based senior policy adviser to the Medical Group Management Association, Englewood, Colo., said he expects a quick turnaround on both rules.

“By law, they have 90 days in which to review, but I think in all practicality, OMB has been involved in the drafting of the final rules, so it’s no surprise when they get them,” Tennant said.

OMB has had HHS’ controversial final rule on the federal requirement on public and patient notification in the event of a breach of personally identifiable health information since May 15. Tennant said he expects both recently submitted rules to be released in a week or so, possibly even later this week.

Tennant also said a proposed healthcare IT privacy rule just left the OMB review list, so “it should be published in the next couple of days.”

Source:http://www.myemrstimulus.com/hhs-sends-final-meaningful-use-rules-to-omb-for-review/

ONC Starts Accepting Applications for EHR Certification Groups

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has started accepting applications from organizations seeking to be named as testing and certification bodies for electronic health record systems, Modern Healthcare reports.

Under the 2009 federal economic stimulus package, health care providers who demonstrate “meaningful use” of certified EHR systems will qualify for federal incentive payments.

ONC issued the final rule on the temporary testing and certification program on June 18, and the rule appeared in the Federal Register on June 24.

The stimulus package gave ONC the option of retaining the Certification Commission for Health IT as the sole EHR certification group or recognizing a new organization, according to Modern Healthcare. ONC opted to expand its search for a new group, and CCHIT has joined a pool of applicants for the distinction.

Carol Bean, a standards harmonization analyst for ONC, said HHS to date has received about 40 application inquiries and 14 requests for applications. She said ONC has 30 days after receiving an application to decide whether the organization qualifies as an “authorized testing and certification body” under the temporary certification program.

The final rules for the permanent authorization program have not yet been released, although a proposed rule was issued in March (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 7/1).

Source:http://www.myemrstimulus.com/onc-starts-accepting-applications-for-ehr-certification-groups/

Standards Organization Calls for ONC To Revisit EHR Certification Rule

The Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission has recommended a series of changes to the federal government’s proposed rule on electronic health record certification, Healthcare IT News reports.

EHNAC, a not-for-profit standards group, issued the recommendations in response to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on EHR certification.

ONC’s proposed rule calls for the establishment of a temporary EHR certification program, which eventually would be replaced by a permanent certification program. The temporary program would allow ONC-authorized certification bodies to test and certify EHRs and EHR modules.

Recommendations

EHNAC officials said the group is concerned that the current definition of ONC-authorized certification bodies would exclude EHNAC and other organizations from consideration as certifiers of health information exchanges.

The group said its recommendations would enable EHNAC to be named a health data exchange certifier without needing official designation as an EHR certifier.

In its recommendations, EHNAC called for ONC to:

* Allow certifiers to establish a “virtual” office for conducting certification tasks;
* Extend the deadline for organizations to develop certification programs to encourage more groups to apply for designation as temporary certifiers;
* Eliminate unscheduled site visits and provide organizations with sufficient time to prepare for planned visits; and
* Refrain from considering a certified testing program a necessary requirement for the certification of health IT products (Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 5/25).

Above article publish on http://www.myemrstimulus.com/standards-organization-calls-onc-revisit-ehr-certification-rule/

Blumenthal: NHIN, NHIN Direct Offer Paths to ‘Meaningful Use’

Last week, National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal published an open letter touting the Nationwide Health Information Network as a model to help health care providers meet the “meaningful use” requirements of the 2009 federal economic stimulus package, Modern Healthcare reports.

Under the stimulus package, health care providers who demonstrate meaningful use of electronic health records will qualify for Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 5/17).

Blumenthal wrote that NHIN is “not a network per se, but rather a set of standards, services, and policies that enable the Internet to be used for the secure exchange of health information to improve health and health care.”

NHIN Direct

He also acknowledged that some health care providers “may have simpler needs for information exchange, or perhaps less technically sophisticated capabilities.” He said such health care providers could benefit from NHIN Direct, which still is under development (Blumenthal letter, 5/14).

NHIN Direct is a basic version of NHIN that offers health care providers open-source software to develop a network for the electronic transmission of health information (Modern Healthcare, 5/17).

Blumenthal wrote that NHIN Direct “is meant to enhance, not replace, the capabilities offered by other means of exchange.” He added that the model could “complement existing NHIN exchange capabilities and strengthen our efforts toward comprehensive interoperability across the nation” (Blumenthal letter, 5/14).

In addition, Blumenthal wrote that ONC is “on an aggressive timeline” to develop standards for NHIN Direct so health care providers can use the framework to qualify for incentive payments.

He also called for greater public participation in the NHIN Direct project through blogs and a community wiki, which are available on the project’s website (Modern Healthcare, 5/17).

Above article publish on http://www.myemrstimulus.com/blumenthal-nhin-nhin-direct-offer-paths-meaningful-use/

CHIME Offers Input on Electronic Health Record Certification Plans

In a comment letter sent Friday, the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives stressed the importance of ensuring that the electronic health record certification process can adequately handle the demand to certify EHR systems, Healthcare IT News reports (Merrill, Healthcare IT News, 4/30).

CHIME also said EHR systems that receive certification under the temporary certification program being established this year should be able to have that certification carry over to the permanent program that will be established in 2012 (Goedert, Health Data Management, 4/30).

The comments are in response to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on EHR certification.

CHIME also recommended that ONC:

* Ensure that the certification program has the capacity to handle demand;
* Focus on EHR certification before expanding to other technologies (Healthcare IT News, 4/30);
* Provide details on how it will coordinate the EHR testing and certification process with the National Institute of Standards and Technology;
* Explain what constitutes a self-developed EHR;
* Require vendors to disclose what functions their products are certified to perform and any known compatibility issues; and
* Give vendors adequate time to recertify their products if a certifying body loses its authority to certify products (Health Data Management, 4/30).

Above article publish on http://www.myemrstimulus.com/chime-offers-input-electronic-health-record-certification-plans/

Medical records system benefits from stimulus funds

By Liv Osby

Stimulus money to the tune of $5.6 million was awarded to Health Sciences South Carolina with a goal of getting 1,000 primary care doctors in the state to adopt the new electronic medical records system.

The funds will be used to set up a regional program called the Center for Information Technology Implementation Assistance. HSSC worked with the state Department of Health and Human Services to develop a statewide strategy for forging ahead with EMR.

“CITIA-SC will play a key role in supporting medical professionals throughout the state as they adopt and expand health information technologies in their practices,” said DHHS Director Emma Forkner.

DHHS spokesman Jeff Stensland said the University of South Carolina estimates about 60 percent of physician practices and 42 percent of hospitals have fully-integrated EMRs.

DHHS recently got a $9 million grant for its statewide health information exchange, which gives hospitals, doctors, clinics and other health care providers access to medical records.

HSSC is a partnership between universities and hospitals in the state to foster economic growth and improve health.

Above article publish on http://www.myemrstimulus.com/medical-records-system-benefits-stimulus-funds/

Ten Keys To A Successful CPOE Implementation

One of the keys to achieving meaningful use and thus being able to qualify for federal incentive payments for the implementation of EMRs is the use of Computerized Physician Order Entry. What exactly is CPOE and how can it be implemented successfully?

CPOE is a program that physicians use to place orders for medications, lab tests, radiology exams, admissions, referrals and other tasks. A CPOE replaces written orders, phone calls and faxes, because it is linked to every other department in the hospital.

The Agency for Health Research and Quality (AHRQ), a unit of the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) awarded ten grants to various health care providers to implement CPOE, and studied what happened. Their results show that there are certain things that providers can do to help improve the chances of a successful implementation.

The ten contracts were spread across both urban and rural hospitals in various parts of the country, and were intended for use in implementing inpatient programs. Some CPOE systems were implemented with EMRs, or in addition to existing EMRs, and all of them were put in place in conjunction with a decision support system.

Interviews with the grant recipients revealed that certain factors were critical to the success of a CPOE implementation. Here is a brief summary:

* Training – Frequent training and retraining is critical to a successful implementation.
* Staffing – Staff who understand both IT and clinical science are important. If you don’t have them, hire them or train existing personnel.
* Workflow – CPOE is by nature disruptive, so plan to redesign your workflow to accommodate these changes.
* Resources – Be sure to allocate enough resources (money, time and people) for planning, training, implementation and maintenance.
* Work With Vendors – Have good relations with vendors, but don’t allow them to delay your implementation program. Write penalties into contracts.
* Committees – Create and use Clinical Steering Committees early and often.
* Order Sets – Involve as many clinicians as possible in the creation of order sets, but strike a balance between filled-in fields and default values.
* Interoperability – Good luck with this one. Most of the grantees faced challenges integrating CPOE with other programs. Vendors did not want to cooperate in connecting to other company’s products.
* Support – Support should be available 24/7, especially at the beginning of the implementation. Address problems quickly and completely. Make support easy to access.
* Alert Fatigue – Expect a lot of alerts when you go live, and expect clinicians to find it annoying. Grantees had to develop new techniques to eliminate unnecessary alerts.

The conclusions reached here show that implementing the CPOE component of an EMR will pose challenges that will require creativity and tenacity while you design workarounds, but a successful implementation is possible. It seems to be true that what works for CPOE will work for other components of an EMR implementation.

Above article publish on http://www.myemrstimulus.com/ten-keys-successful-cpoe-implementation/

Providers will attest to meaningful use via CMS registration system

By Neil Versel

If nothing else, it should at least be easy to register to receive federal incentive payments for meaningful use of EMRs.

CMS has awarded a $1.6 million contract to CGI Federal, a Fairfax, Va.-based unit of Montreal-based technology consulting firm CGI Group, to revise the existing Provider Enrollment Chain Ownership System (PECOS) so physicians and hospitals can attest to meeting the requirements for meaningful use that will qualify them for Medicare bonuses. PECOS currently manages and verifies enrollment of Medicare providers and vendors.

Build-out of the online system to accommodate EMR incentive enrollment should take about 10 months, CMS says. Hospitals, however, could be eligible for the bonuses as soon as the end of December, since the rules for meaningful use, as currently proposed, only requires providers to meet the standards for 90 consecutive days in 2011. Medicare Part A, which applies to inpatient care, follows the federal fiscal year, which begins Oct.1.

For more information:
- see this Government Health IT story
- read this CMS notice about the contract award

Above article publish on http://www.myemrstimulus.com/providers-attest-meaningful-cms-registration-system/

Bill Would Expand Eligibility for ‘Meaningful Use’ Incentives

Yesterday, Reps. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) and Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) introduced a bill (HR 5025) that would allow behavioral, mental health and substance abuse treatment providers to qualify for incentive payments for the “meaningful use” of electronic health records, Healthcare IT News reports.

Under the 2009 federal economic stimulus package, hospitals and physicians who demonstrate meaningful use of EHRs can qualify for incentive payments through Medicaid and Medicare.

The new Health Information Technology Extension for Behavioral Health Services Act of 2010 would extend eligibility for the incentive payments to:

* Behavioral and mental health professionals and clinics;
* Substance abuse professionals and treatment facilities;
* Psychiatric hospitals; and
* Licensed psychologists and clinical social workers (Merrill, Healthcare IT News, 4/16).

Above article publish on http://www.myemrstimulus.com/bill-expand-eligibility-meaningful-use-incentives/

Massachusetts Receives $24 Million in HIT Funding

By, Rich Silverman

Massachusetts, long a leader in the delivery of quality medical care to its citizens, has just received more than $24 million from the federal government to speed the adoption of electronic medical records (EMRs) throughout the Commonwealth.

According to a report in govmonitor .com, the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) has authorized the release of the $24 million, the maximum that Massachusetts is entitled to under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. According to the report, $13.4 million will go to support the adoption of EMRs throughout the Commonwealth, and another $1.6 million will go toward creating a statewide high-speed communications system for medical data and records.

According to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, “This federal funding will help reduce health care costs and improve patient care using proven technologies, many of which are developed right here in Massachusetts.” Lieutenant Governor Timothy Murray added that in addition to streamlining health care, the money would help create jobs.

The grants, given in furtherance of the adoption of EMRs, will be administered by the Massachusetts e-Health Institute, the state agency created for that purpose. One if its key goals, according to an article in MassHighTech.com, will be to ensure the privacy of all medical records in the state.

Couple the release of this funding with recent news that meaningful use has finally been defined and that ONC is taking definitive steps to develop a certification, and it looks like providers in Massachusetts are finally getting the tools they need to fully implement EMRs.

Above article publish on http://www.myemrstimulus.com/massachusetts-receives-24-million-hit-funding/

CMS Aims To Coordinate ‘Meaningful Use’ Rules With Other Regulations

CMS must pay special attention to ensure that the final version of the proposed “meaningful use” rule for electronic health records fits with other rules for standards and certification, as well at the interim final rule for the certification of EHRs, Government Health IT reports.

Earlier this year, CMS published a notice of proposed rulemaking describing how health care providers can demonstrate meaningful use of certified EHRs to qualify for incentive payments under the 2009 federal economic stimulus package.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT also published an interim final rule describing required certification standards for EHR technology.

Tony Trenkle, CMS director of e-health and standards, recently stressed how the interplay between different regulations will be important in determining what health care providers will need to demonstrate to qualify for the incentive payments.

ONC policy analyst Steve Posnack said that CMS and ONC are coordinating their regulations to ensure that the standards set for determining meaningful use are in step with rules governing certification of EHRs (Mosquera, Government Health IT, 3/18).


Above article publish on http://www.myemrstimulus.com/cms-aims-coordinate-meaningful-use-rules-regulations/

Standards Panel Calls for Increased Monitoring of Security in EHR Modules

Vendors and users of electronic health record modules should monitor them closely for potential data security breaches, according to the Health IT Standards Committee, Government Health IT reports.

The suggestion was included in a summary of the committee’s recommendations on the interim final rule on standards and certification criteria for health IT under the 2009 federal economic stimulus package. The rule describes the requirements for certified EHR systems that physicians and hospitals must use to qualify for health IT adoption incentives.

John Halamka — vice chair of the committee, who published a summary of the recommendations in a March 9 blog post — said the committee “recommended that a list of acceptable technology standards be included in the certification process” in part because IT security standards change quickly, particularly for those strengthening encryption.

According to Halamka, the committee also recommended that the interim final rule “specify broad families of standards” for clinical operations, such as a major version of each standard that also includes a “detailed implementation guide that serves as a floor.”

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has offered the interim final rule for public comment until Monday (Mosquera, Government Health IT, 3/11).

Above article publish on http://www.myemrstimulus.com/standards-panel-calls-increased-monitoring-security-ehr-modules/