News For IT Solutions Providers: HIMSS Responds To MU 3

By Megan Williams, contributing writer

As we near the start of Meaningful Use 3, more organizations and entities are taking advantage of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) requests for comments.

Some of the latest comments have come from HIMSS that stress three main points:

• Decreasing the prescriptive nature of the EHR (electronic health record) Incentive program
• Reducing the complexity of the 2015 Certification Criteria
• Increasing focus on capabilities that were established earlier in the program

While it had some criticisms, HIMSS does overall support the MU program and its potential to change healthcare policy and practice in the U.S., calling it a “critical tool for enabling healthcare transformation.” Its stance on the program is based on statistics — namely the fact that “70 percent of hospitals have made a positive progression in the advancement of their EHR capabilities over the last five years, with over 60 percent of ambulatory facilities showing similar progress in the last three years.”

Some additional points include:

• Support for a proposal in the NPRM the would outline MU under a single definition starting in 2018 (calendar year), regardless of when a provider began to participate in the program
• Recommendations on aligning work done around the EHR Incentive Program with other CMS quality reporting programs that also use CHIT. HIMSS believes this will lessen burden on healthcare providers.
• Continued focus on patient safety in the implementation, development, and wide-spread use of HIT systems
• Recommendation that the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) addresses the overall complexity of the 2015 Edition Certification Rule through a reduction in the number of criterion, standards, and functionalities
• Cautious support of ONC’s work to establish innovative certification and testing HIT programs
• The establishment of program goals before moving on with any certification program by ONC
• Greater “harmonization and alignment” across all programs covered under certification.
• Support for including “level of adoption” and “maturity among standards” as considerations when evaluating inclusions for certification programs

For more on HIMSS’ efforts to help educate professionals on MU Stage 3, please review this article covering the organization’s introductory materials around the MU Stage 3 initiative.