The Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has officially launched the State Meaningful Use Acceleration Challenge 2.0 to encourage states to continue collaborating with their stakeholders and expand partnerships to achieve state and national goals in EHR adoption and meeting Meaningful Use criteria.
The ONC has been aggressively setting goals on EHR Adoption and Meaningful Use with the following goals:
- 50% of physician offices using EHRs across the nation
- 80% of eligible hospitals receiving Meaningful Use incentive payments by the end of 2013
The performance measures for Challenge 2.0 will look at cumulative figures for the number and share of eligible providers, eligible hospitals, and rural providers receiving incentives for meeting Meaningful Use criteria. These measures include:
- Cumulative number of eligible professionals paid by Medicare or Medicaid
- Cumulative number of eligible hospitals paid by Medicare or Medicaid
- Cumulative number of rural providers and hospitals that receive payments by Medicare or Medicaid
Challenge 2.0 will also evaluate the number of new providers and hospitals paid through the end of 2013. These measures include:
- Number of new eligible professionals receiving Medicare or Medicaid payments in 2013,
- Number of new eligible hospitals receiving payments in 2013, and
- Number of new eligible professionals in rural areas who received payments in 2013.
Ongoing updates will be posted on the ONC Dashboard. ONC will be reaching out to states individually to find ways to support these synergistic goals. State HIE Project Officers and REC Project Officers will share tools on HealthIT.gov along with the entire set of 16 Challenge 2.0 performance measures.
$12.7B in meaningful use incentive payments had been distributed to 234,065 eligible hospitals and healthcare professionals according to latest report from CMS.
For more information visit ONC Buzz Blog posts and continue to monitor ONC’s Dashboard where you will find updates throughout the year on Challenge 2.0. These updates will show our progress toward our shared goals of achieving Meaningful Use and improving care for patients.
