Hospitals have an extra year before they have to prove that they can use electronic health records to improve patient outcomes, part of the meaningful-use requirements for receiving incentive payments from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
The federal agency pushed back the deadline for Stage 2 of what’s known as “meaningful use” to 2016, and Stage 3 was bumped a year to 2017.
“Whether the delay is good or bad news really depends on how far along you are,” said Mary Kay Clunies-Ross, a spokeswoman for the Washington State Hospital Association. “For providers who aren’t ready to meet the Stage 3 requirements, it’s good news. For those who have already made the investments, the delay of the incentive payments is tough.”
Meaningful use is a standard for how to use electronic health records to better care for patients. It’s also an incentive program under the Healthcare Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act.
The idea behind using electronic health records is to maintain more complete patient histories, which can travel with the patient to new doctors and help physicians provide better care.
Essentially, the CMS doesn’t just want hospitals and physicians to have electronic health-record systems, they must also effectively use the data in those systems to improve care — so those that perform well under Stage 2 stand to get richer payouts from the CMS.
Meaningful use is a complex, three-stage process, but at the most basic level, Stage 1 requires hospitals and physicians to prove they can capture and share data. Stage 2 requires use of the records for advanced clinical processes, and Stage 3 will require improved outcomes based on the use of data in those records.
