Important Changes for 2014 Stage 1 attestation – Your Patient Portal is now required
Mid-year, CMS changed the Core and Menu measures for Stage 1 Meaningful Use attestation. Stage one previously had ten (10) measures and now has nine (9). Menu measure five (5) was “rolled into” core measure 12 and the threshold increased to 50%. The wording changed slightly and now requires practices to “Provide patients the ability to view online, download, and transmit their health information.” The important word here is “provide”. CMS seems to have gained an understanding that practices may not be able to force their patients to log into their patient portal, so CMS has modified the measure to ensure that practices are giving their patients this option. As is always the case with demonstrating Meaningful Use, practices intending on attesting need to demonstrate that they are in fact, providing their patients with access to their patient portal.
So what are your next steps? If you have not implemented, now is a good time to reach out to your EHR provider and find out the cost and timeline for implementing. Training your staff is an important next step to ensure that they understand the importance of capturing this data. You will want to identify and train a portal manager. Ask your EHR provider what kind of training resources they have available. Once the portal is in place, you will want to configure it with a logo, welcome message and other tools such as your privacy policy. If your system allows, you may also be setting preferences for appointment communications and clinical information. Finally, you are going to have to inform your patients about the portal; and even though you have gone paperless with your charts, now is a good time to create a brochure to help patients register, log in, and send you a portal message. A tech-savvy, “Generation Y” member of your practice can probably quickly and easily create this brochure using a snipping tool and some content guidance.
Chances are if you are already implemented, you have passed a few of these hurdles, but you may want to now think about long term management. Again, here is where your EHR provider’s knowledge of their portal tool comes in handy. What are the enhancements down the road? Will your current EHR allow you to document that you have provided your patient with portal access instructions and will this count towards meeting Stage 1 Core Measure 12? Does your EHR tool provide you with indicators for recently received messages that are incorporated into your patient’s chart and ones that have not yet been incorporated? Who is your back-up portal manager, for when your current staffer goes on that cruise?
gGastro answers many of these questions with a user-friendly patient portal and implementation tool. We offer a gastro-specific EHR with an integrated, dynamic patient portal that has undergone recent enhancements to meet the newly released 2014 Stage 1 requirements. Our products continue to grow and develop in-line with CMS regulations. Our training and educational resources offer learners a comprehensive presentation of the user-interface and the industry regulations.
Tessa Boudreaux, MBA
e-Learning Manager, gMed
