Meaningful Use Stage 3 Draft On The Way

Well, it looks like we’ve got a new set of MU regulations afoot. Though we don’t even have a final version of Meaningful Use Stage 2 regs in place yet, HHS apparently plans to issue Meaningful Use Stage 3 draft regulations sometime in August.

According to HealthcareInformatics, ONC plans to make sure Stage 2 and Stage 3 square by September or October of this year.  (Why it would make sense to issue Stage 3 now, before Stage 2 has even been field tested, is a question clearly for wiser heads than my own. To me it just doesn’t make sense…)

The magazine reports that the core of Meaningful Use Stage 3 recommendations is likely to be as follows. It says providers and hospitals will be asked to have an EMR in place which:

  • Tracks individual care goals;
  • Records care team members, their roles, and their contact information across care settings;
  • Tracks tasks/steps and responsible party;
  • Feeds population health management;
  • Facilitates reconciliation of medications, problem lists, goals, and plan of care; and
  • Allows for input and viewing by all care team members, the patient and their caregivers.

And it says that potential measures would be:

  • A platform for collaborative care exists and is being used for at least 20 percent of patients.
  • Receiving care team members in a care transition access information for at least 10 percent of patients having an active collaborative care plan.

To me, the idea of having two other sets of MU standards swimming around out there when people are still struggling with Stage 1 is not a smart move. But hey, given all the delays in getting standards out there, maybe we should just be glad that they’re getting done!

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

2 Comments

  • Reading through this I see some real ‘nice to have’ items. But at the same time we have huge numbers of people with no viable health care coverage, lots more with minimal coverage. We know that some additional people will get coverage under the Affordable Care Act, but we also know that in places like SOME Medicaid clinics that one may feel lucky to actually get treated (keep in mind that many practices do not accept Medicaid), so to have items like this would be REALLY nice but not all that likely. Nearly the same issue with Medicare – many practices don’t accept Medicare. So the practices that don’t get incentive money are the ones that could most easily meet these new ‘requirements’.

    Am I missing something here?

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