Are you on track to meet EHR Meaningful Use deadlines?

Last month, The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released Stage 3 for their Electronic Health Records (EHR) Incentive programs. This announcement finalizes the program’s contours and requirements since its initial inclusion in the Recovery Act of 2009.

Intended to improve patient clinical outcomes and reduce the cost of care by shifting providers away from paper-based health records, the Meaningful Use program has not been without its share of controversy. After rolling out Stage 1 in 2011–12 and Stage 2 in 2014, CMS claims to have considered more than 2,500 comments on the program in outlining the final set of guidelines.

According to CMS’s overview, the final provisions will:

• Shift the paradigm so health IT becomes a tool for care improvement, not an end in itself.
• Provide simplicity and flexibility so that providers can choose measures they use in their practices and report progress that are most meaningful to their practice.
• Give providers and state Medicaid agencies more time — 27 months, until Jan. 1, 2018 — to comply with the new requirements and prepare for the next set of system improvements.
• Give developers more time to create the next advancements in technology that will be easier to use and more appropriate to new models of care and access to data by consumers.
• Support provider exchange of health information and a more useful interoperable infrastructure for information exchange between providers and with patients.
• Address health information blocking and interoperability between providers and with patients.

We are now midway through a 60-day comment period, during which time providers and hospitals can weigh in on changes — and if past experience is any guide, feedback will surely be voluminous. According to CMS’s own data, fewer than 20 percent of hospitals were compliant with the Stage 2 Meaningful Use requirements, which prompted many stakeholders to call for changes to the program and its proposed calendar.

And one thing is certain: By 2018, all participating providers must comply with the settled requirements using a certified EHR system.

This means enormous pressure on providers that accept Medicare and Medicaid patients to comply with the program before the deadline. Additionally, their EHR vendor partners are pressed to help their clients meet these looming timetables.

Fortunately, both parties have options, even at this stage of the process.

Some providers may consider switching EHR vendors, perhaps to save money by switching to a competing alternative or to more rapidly scale their deployment. However, many feel locked in.

In reality, most of the ancillary services and systems they use in conjunction with their current EHR product offer robust APIs that seamlessly integrate with virtually every EHR system on the market. Therefore, providers are free to shop around with confidence that whatever system they ultimately select, they will not lose access to other critical components of their infrastructure.

Meanwhile, developers scrambling to create new offerings or reduce the cost of existing products to meet client requirements quickly can leverage these same APIs — often instantaneously.

Many providers and technology vendors, including EHR partners, utilize Dorado’s APIs to plug into the industry’s largest network of Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial insurance payers, thereby reducing costs and improving their own operational efficiencies.

As many stakeholders are no doubt scrambling toward compliance in the wake of last month’s announcement, Dorado is available to provide live demonstrations of our solutions and give you an idea of how they would work in you environment.

Just contact us at sales@doradosystems.com — remember, when it comes to meeting EHR Meaningful Use deadlines, you’re not alone.