The recommendations, which will help determine who receives federal stimulus funding, have been revised from an initial draft.
By Chris Silva, AMNews
The Obama administration’s national health information technology coordinator has approved recommended definitions for what constitutes “meaningful use” of electronic health records, about a month after asking a key working group to revise its initial recommendations.
The green light from David Blumenthal, MD, means that the recommendations now will be sent to the Dept. of Health and Human Services, which by the end of the year must issue a rule with final definitions. Meaningful use is a key term that ultimately will determine which physicians and hospitals are eligible for billions in federal EHR money made available through the economic stimulus package approved earlier this year.
Recommendations from Dr. Blumenthal and the Health IT Policy Committee provide the first look at a policy framework for the development and adoption of a nationwide health information infrastructure. The committee said it received nearly 800 comments after unveiling a first draft of the recommendations June 16, though policy experts say few major changes were made since then.
“To say Dr. Blumenthal sent the working group back to the drawing board really is inaccurate,” said Erica Drazen. a managing partner in the health care group at Computer Sciences Corp., a technology firm in Waltham, Mass. “There weren’t really too many surprises or changes made from the initial draft. If anything, it’s slightly more aggressive.”
Drazen pointed out, for example, how the final recommendations specified that only 10% of all orders entered by an authorizing physician at a hospital must be made via computerized physician order entry. The initial draft did not provide an exact percentage. But the requirement for physician practices remains the same — they must use CPOE for all orders, according to the final version. Doctors also received several additional recommended standards to meet by 2011. Read More EMR