Committee Work Group Addresses CQMs for Stage 2 Meaningful Use

Stage 2 Meaningful Use Comment Period Winding Down

On February 22, 2012 CMS released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for Stage 2 Meaningful Use. The NPRM outlines proposed requirements for eligible professionals, eligible hospitals and CAHs seeking to meet Stage 2 of the EHR Incentive program. It was published in the Federal Register on March 7, starting the clock ticking on a 90 day comment period. This comment period comes to a close on May 7.

On Monday the Health IT Policy Committee’s quality measures work group met to discuss final recommendations for the NPRM. Modern Healthcare reported that at this meeting workgroup members discussed a key issue: How best to incorporate clinical quality measures for Stage 2 meaningful use requirement. The favored approach discussed by the work group would be to make providers select and submit 12 clinical quality measures from a group of 125 possible measures. In addition to this “at least one measure would have to address each of six care-improvement ‘domains’: patient and family engagement, patient safety, care coordination, population and public health, efficient use of health resources, and clinical process/effectiveness.”

In draft list of recommendations, the work group stated that there is also an issue with specialists facing the hurdle of finding 12 CQMs appropriate to their speciality and apply to all six domains.

The work group will meet this Friday and present final recommendations May 4.  You can still submit comments on proposed Stage 2 meaningful use requirement as well as on the NPRM for EHR Certification.

Medicare and Medicaid Programs: Electronic Health Record Incentive Program-Stage 2 Meaningful Use
Federal Register page 13698
Submit a comment

Health Information Technology; Implementation Specifications, and Certification Criteria: Electronic Health Record Technology, 2014 Edition
Federal Register page 13832
Submit a comment

You can also read a summary of Stage 2 meaningful use that looks at the 5 major provisions proposed by CMS and review our summary of the EHR certification criteria edition 2014 listing the criteria for Base EHR.