Health Information Compliance Alert

Update your CEHRT to the 2015 edition by 2019, CMS says.

Health IT makes light work of documentation, billing, prescribing, and more. But quality measures, confusion over access to patients' data, and federal minutia often get in the way of the valuable resource that technology is for providers. CMS wants to change that.

Review: In its March 6, 2018 release at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Annual Conference in Las Vegas, CMS advised practices that it plans to "overhaul" the current EHR system and improve patients' access to their own health data.

Pocket this overview of the biggest takeaways from CMS Administrator Seema Verma's announcement at HIMSS. The initiatives outlined in the fact sheet include and aim to:

• Make reporting quality measures easier and more affordable by spotlighting interoperability in a "streamlined" renovation of the Medicare EHR Incentive Program for hospitals and the Quality Payment Program's Advancing Care Information (ACI) for eligible clinicians.
• Offer QPP measures that promote the efficient sharing of data between patients and providers.
• Stop patient information blocking with new reporting requirements for hospitals and physicians.
• Require practices to update their Certified EHR Technology (CEHRT) to the 2015 editions, which include better application programming interfaces (APIs), by 2019.
• Pinpoint the exact patient information mandated to be delivered to the patient electronically upon discharge.
• Streamline policies regarding evaluation and management (E/M) codes "to modernize documentation requirements and reduce clinician burden" in coordination with stakeholder feedback.
• Rework systems to cut down duplicate testing issues.

Resource: To read the new CMS guidance on interoperability initiatives in greater detail, visit the CMS fact sheet at www.cms.gov/Newsroom/MediaReleaseDatabase/Fact-sheets/2018-Fact-sheets-items/2018-03-06.html.