It’s fun to have this post on Monday since we did a few years of Meaningful Use Monday posts. This actually comes from a regular reader of EMR and HIPAA who works at an EHR vendor. He wanted to point out a change to meaningful use stage 1 that they’d missed. I expect there are likely others that might have missed this change as well.
Practices attesting stage 1 in 2014 for their year one or two must have the Patient Portal. ONC made a change and made the menu item Core for this in Stage 1. We thought it was stage 2 only. I reached out to a dozen or so REC consultants we work with and more than half of them had missed this point also.
CMS replaced the Stage 1 objectives for providing electronic copies of (CORE) and electronic access to health information (MENU) with the objective to provide patients the ability to view, download, or transmit their health information.
This means that any provider attesting to Stage 1 MU in 2014 (either Year 1 or Year 2) must attest to the objective: “Provide patients ability to view download and transmit their health information.” This will be a CORE measure and will require the portal.
More information is available on page 3 of this
http://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Legislation/EHRIncentivePrograms/Downloads/Stage1ChangesTipsheet.pdf
Looks like we’re going to have more patient portals in place really soon. Is your organization ready with a patient portal to meet this meaningful use measure?
Yep, those “mid-stream” changes were another reason I was telling folks to attest ASAP.
One of your major mis-steps was talking to your REC. I say that only partially in jest.
This is a key change that many still don’t realize. I wrote a blog back in February explaining this change in detail. http://www.buildyouremr.com/build-your-emr-blog/bid/265867/patient-engagement-in-meaningful-use-stage-1-vs-stage-2