After facing severe criticism from members of Congress, professional medical organizations and providers pushing to delay the final rules for Meaningful Use Stage 3. On Tuesday, The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released the final rule for the Meaningful Use program with hopes to simplify requirements and add new flexibilities for providers.
CMS reviewed and considered more than 2,500 comments
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Meaningful Use | Policy, News, Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Is Meaningful Use a Roadblock to Achieving Interoperability?
This week, a study published by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), known as the “Congressional Watchdog,” revealed the Meaningful Use program is a roadblock to achieving EHR interoperability. Conducted at the request of congressional leaders, the GAO interviewed 18 groups outside of the federal government that specialize in EHRs and are working to achieve EHR interoperability.
GAO asked the representatives of these groups to share their perspectives of the meaningful use” program.
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Sen. Alexandar: 5 Reasons to Delay Meaningful Use Stage 3 Rulemaking
Editor's Note: Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) gives administration officials five reasons to take more time before making final the Meaningful Use Stage 3 rule of the federal government’s program to require doctors and hospitals to create EHR systems.
Over the last 5 years, the taxpayers have spent $30 billion to encourage doctors and hospitals to adopt electronic health records systems. The whole purpose of this program is to benefit patients, so that they and their health care providers
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Congressional Leaders Urge Admin to Delay Meaningful Use Stage 3 Rulemaking
On Tuesday, congressional leaders continued to urge the Obama administration to immediately adopt Meaningful Use Stage 2 modifications and delay final rulemaking for Meaningful Use Stage 3 no sooner than January 1, 2017. The call from U.S. Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) comes as a bipartisan group of 96 Republicans and 20 Democrats in the House of Representatives in a separate letter to the administration urged it to “pause” the process of making stage three
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AMA, 41 Other Medical Societies Push to Delay Meaningful Use Stage 3
On Thursday, the American Medical Association (AMA) and 41 medical societies have backed Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) in urging the administration to delay Meaningful Use Stage 3 in light of pivotal changes to Medicare. The coalition of physician organizations firmly believes that locking in Stage 3 rules for the Meaningful Use program would be a detrimental step that undermines the implementation of Medicare payment reforms.
In letters delivered to the Secretary of Health and Human
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AMA Supports Legislative Effort to Revise Meaningful Use
This week, the American Medical Association (AMA) declared its strong support for new legislation responding to the depths of doctors’ dissatisfaction with the federal government’s Meaningful Use program. The bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Renee Ellmers from North Carolina would address many problems in the Meaningful Use Program by introducing needed flexibility and enhancing EHR to improve patient care and access to health information.
The Meaningful Use program has spurred 80 percent of
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“Failed” Promise of EHRs May Stand in Way of Precision Medicine
On Tuesday, U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said that the “failed promise” of the $28 billion EHR program may stand in the way of a precision medicine initiative until physicians are able to use systems that communicate with one another. The statement was made during the committee’s innovation initiative to examine how we get safe drugs, devices, and treatments from the discovery process through the regulatory process into the medicine cabinets and doctors’ offices more quickly and
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Rebooting Meaningful Use: Is It Accomplishing Its Mission?
Editor's Note: Dr. Reid Coleman is the Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) for evidence-based medicine at Nuance.
Meaningful Use is an important set of criteria designed to improve quality and safety, but is it accomplishing its mission?
The proposed rules for Meaningful Use (MU) Stage 3 were just released by both CMS and the ONC. Many writers have commented on these rules, and this blog post is not a commentary about the rules. As always, I recommend readers go to John
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Former Hospital CFO Ordered to Pay $4.5M for Meaningful Use Fraud
Former Shelby Regional Medical Center CFO, Joe White has been ordered to pay more than $4.5 million in restitution for his role in a meaningful use fraud scheme, KXXV first reports. White pleaded guilty for directed its EHR vendor, eCareSoft and hospital employees to manually enter data from paper records into the EHR system after the patient was discharged to meet the MU thresholds criteria. Additionally, White also made false statements regarding other hospitals had successfully converting to
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Meaningful Use Stage 3: 8 Key Questions for Physicians
This post is sponsored by Revenue XL
By now, most physicians know about Meaningful Use (MU)—the government program that provides incentive payments to eligible providers that meet specific criteria when implementing certified electronic health records (EHR). Providers currently meet either Stage 1 or Stage 2 criteria, depending on their implementation timeline.
However, on March 20, 2015, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a notice of proposed rulemaking for Stage
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