HHS Releases “Meaningful Use” Regulations; Transparency Steps
With less than 24 hours until a December 31st deadline, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) has released interim federal regulations defining “meaningful use” and setting standards for the Electronic Heath Record Incentive Program (EHRIP). The “interim final regulations” will go into effect 30 days following publication (January 5, 2010), and enter into a 60 day public comment and refinement period before final authorization sometime later this year.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 created the EHRIP to provide subsidies to eligible healthcare providers to offset to the cost of moving from paper health records (PHR) to electronic health records (EHR). In order to receive federal funds, the legislation required each provider to demonstrate that EHR’s provide “meaningful use” to their practice/business, but did not provide any details on just what constituted “meaningful use.”
Capping off a process that started in June 2009, a HHS press release disclosed on December 30, 2009, that “meaningful use” will generally be defined as “an eligible professional or eligible hospital that, during the specified reporting period, demonstrates meaningful use of certified EHR technology in a form and manner consistent with certain objectives and measures presented in the regulation.” ModernHealthCare.com reports that “under [these] new regulations EHRs must be able to securely exchange information among providers and between providers and patients using standardized data elements and technologies.” HHS has provided the full 556-page regulation on the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) website.
With billions of subsidies at stake and public outcry to make the process more transparent, it appears that the head of ONC, Dr. David Blumenthal, is taking steps to make all future meetings public. “I am committed to open and transparent discussion of issues critical to achieving ONC’s goals of promoting adoption and meaningful use of health information technology,” Blumenthal wrote in his blog Health IT Buzz. “Beginning January 1, we’ll implement a new policy that will open up workgroup meetings to the public unless a closed meeting is clearly in the public interest.”
Blumenthal’s announcement comes after several closed-door workgroup and committee meetings beginning in June 2009. According to ModernHealthCare.com what is “at issue is an interpretation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, or FACA, and the applicability of federal open-door rules to the work groups and subcommittees of FACA advisory panels.” Members of the Obama Administration have argued that any closed-door meetings have complied with FACA, but have not been forthcoming with reasons for all past closed-door meeting as required by law.
Find us on