The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office for the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT announced that McKesson and Meditech would be the first vendors for the Designated Test EHR program.
As part of Meaningful Use Stage 2, physicians must not only adopt electronic health records (EHR) technology, but they must demonstrate interoperability of their system with other systems. Eligible professionals and hospitals must (1) either conduct an electronic exchange of summary of care documents with an EHR system that is different from their own OR (2) conduct one or more successful tests with CMS’ designated test EHR through the EHR reporting period.
McKesson and Meditech will serve as CMS’ test EHRs for eligible professionals (EP), eligible hospitals (EH), and crucial access hospitals (CAH) who choose to pursue the second option. The test EHRs will be registered on EHR Randomizer, a software system hosted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which will randomly match EPs, EHs, and CAHs with a designated test EHR that is developed by a different EHR vendor. The agencies chose McKesson and Meditech as the first test EHRs, but have put out a call for others in the EHR technology developer community to participate in the test program.
In regards to EHR Randomizer, ONC states:
Providers will enter information about their current EHR in the Randomizer to obtain a randomly selected Test EHR that is different from their own EHR technology. The provider will establish trust with the Test EHR and send a direct message that includes a test CCDA care summary record (no live data is to be sent, only test data) to the test EHR’s designated address. After the test EHR successfully receives a direct message they will be required to send notification to the provider indicating that the direct message was successfully received. This notification may be in the form of an email to the provider. The provider will be able to use the notification as proof of meeting measure No. 3 for the purpose of Meaningful Use attestation.
CMS’ goal in encouraging EHRs is to modernize the health care delivery process—to reduce mistakes and hospital readmissions and to provide preventative care to patients. However, there is some concern that physicians may be overwhelmed with requirements to show that they “meaningfully use” their systems as required by CMS.
Last week, Modern Healthcare reported that EHR adoption rate has been sluggish. “The pace of adoption of electronic health-record systems has begun to slow, and the physicians who have adopted systems have a long way to go to meet the government’s Stage 2 criteria for meaningful use of the technology.”
Not surprisingly, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information cites a more positive survey.
On Jan. 17, Karen Desalvo, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology published an article on the Health Care Blog, entitled “Survey Says: HER Incentive Program is on Track”:
13% of physicians who responded said they both intended to participate in the incentive program and had a system that could support 14 of the Meaningful Use Stage 2 “core set of objectives,” ahead of target dates. This survey was performed in early 2013 – before 2014 certified products were even available.
The deadline to begin attesting for Meaningful Use Stage 2 is October 2014 for the earliest adopters of Meaningful Use Stage 1, so more than one in ten physicians decided on their own to participate Meaningful Use Stage 2 capabilities more than a year earlier than necessary. These are early adopters who recognize the benefits of EHRs.
The chart below provides a more detailed look at Stage 2 Requirements. Measure 3 includes the electronic exchange requirement, and is listed at the bottom.