News
Physicians and other health care professionals would need to attest to meeting criteria for the meaningful use of electronic health records for 90 days in 2015, under a proposed change announced by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services April 10.
The agency included a number of other changes in the proposed rule, including reducing the attestation period for those new to the meaningful use program in 2015 and 2016 to 90 days. The proposed rule is scheduled to be published April 15 in the Federal Register.
kokouu/iStockphoto.com
The proposed rule is designed to align the stage 1 and stage 2 meaningful use criteria with the proposed stage 3 criteria issued earlier this year.
Other changes include moving the hospital meaningful use attestation period to a calendar year for 2015, away from the current fiscal year period. This would give hospitals an additional 3 months to attest to meeting the meaningful use criteria in 2015.
The proposed rule also would reduce the number of patients who must access their patient portal from 5% of patients to “equal to or greater than 1.” The measure tracking secure messaging would be changed from a percentage-based measure to attesting that the secure messaging function is “fully enabled.”
Comments on the proposed rule can be made at www.regulations.gov are due June 15.
