The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has published a proposed rule for stage 3 of its meaningful use (MU) program for promoting the adoption of healthcare information technology (HIT).
The proposed MU rule specifies the criteria that healthcare professionals, hospitals, and other healthcare providers must meet to qualify for Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments for HIT adoption -- as well as to avoid penalties for lack of implementation.
The stage 3 rule encourages electronic submission of clinical quality measures data for all providers where feasible in 2017, proposes to require electronic submission of such data by 2018, and establishes rules for transitioning the program to a single stage of meaningful use.
The rule would also change the reporting period for electronic health records (EHRs) so that all healthcare providers would report under a full calendar year timeline under the Medicaid EHR Incentive Program, with limited exception for providers demonstrating MU for the first time.
In developments affecting radiology, HHS said it proposes to continue the policy established in stage 2 of including orders for radiology tests, as they are often part of computerized physician order-entry (CPOE) implementation. However, in stage 3, HHS is seeking to expand its terminology to include diagnostic imaging, "which is a broader category including other imaging tests such as ultrasound, magnetic resonance, and computed tomography in addition to traditional radiology."
HHS said the change addresses the needs of specialists and allows for a wider variety of clinical orders to be included in the program.
In addition, the threshold for the percentage of diagnostic imaging orders that must be submitted using CPOE has been increased from 30% to 60%. The mean performance for radiology orders under stage 2 of the program was 83%.
The stage 3 proposed rule is available here, and the comment period ends on May 29, 2015.
