A final rule issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services outlines the objectives healthcare professionals and acute care hospitals must meet when adopting electronic health records in order to qualify for CMS bonus payments. Ambulatory surgery centers are not eligible for stimulus funds, but individual surgeons may be if they qualify.
Providers and hospitals are eligible for incentive payments - estimated to reach $27 billion over the next 10 years - under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009 as long as they achieve "meaningful use" stipulations set in place by the final rule. The mandates for receiving incentive payments will be implemented over a multi-year period, with additional conditions gradually raising the bar on IT requirements, says HHS.
According to the New England Journal of Medicine's summary of the final rule, eligible professionals and hospitals can qualify as meaningful users in 2011 and 2012 by meeting 15 core objectives that include recording more than half of patients' demographic information electronically, maintaining an active electronic medication list for more than 80% of patients and implementing systems to protect the privacy and security of patient data stored in EHRs. Providers and hospitals must also implement 5 additional tasks from a menu of 10 options.
HHS instituted the flexible 2-track program in response to feedback it received from more than 2,000 healthcare professionals during the public comment period for its proposed rule earlier this year. Other significant changes made to the final rule include defining a hospital-based eligible professional as someone who "performs substantially all of his or her services in an inpatient hospital setting or emergency room only" and the inclusion of critical access hospitals under the acute-care hospital umbrella.
"In delivering on the goals that Congress called for, we have sought to provide the leadership and coordination that are essential for a large, technology-based enterprise," says David Blumenthal, MD, national coordinator for health information technology. "At the same time, we have sought and received extensive input from the healthcare community, and we have drawn on their experience and wisdom to produce objectives that are both ambitious and achievable."
For more information about the EHR incentive program, visit CMS's website on the subject.
Daniel Cook
