Stage 2 Reporting Burden Shaved in Half

Providers participating in the electronic health records Meaningful Use program during the next couple years will have far fewer objectives and measures to report under final rulemaking modifications to Stages 1 and 2.

Many of the measures have “topped out,” meaning they have substantially been adopted and are commonly used so they no longer need to be attested to under the Meaningful Use program, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The dropped measures are:

Eligible Professionals: Record demographics, vital signs and smoking status; clinical summaries, structured lab results, patient list, patient reminders, summary of care (Measure 1—Any Method and Measure  3—Test), electronic notes, imaging results and family health history.

Hospitals: Record demographics, vital signs and smoking status; structured lab results, patient list, summary of care (Measure 1—Any Method and Measure 3—Test), eMAR, advanced directives, electronic notes, imaging results, family health history and structured labs to ambulatory providers.

Also See: New MU Rules Still Present Challenge for Provider CIOs

While removing these measures from the Meaningful Use reporting process, CMS in a final rule issued on Oct. 6 encourages continued use in daily practice. “The removal of these measures is in no way intended as a withdrawal of an endorsement for these best practices or to discourage providers from conducting and tracking these activities for their own quality improvement goals. Instead, we would no longer require providers to calculate and attest to the results of these measures in order to demonstrate Meaningful Use beginning in 2015.”

The final rule, which also finalizes Stage 3 of Meaningful Use—the last stage—is available here.