March 8, 2010 Update
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has withdrawn the proposed rule establishing a certification program for electronic health records software and replaced it with a corrected version. ONC on March 2 placed the proposed rule on the Federal Register's public inspection desk, making it available for viewing before official publication. That version, FR Doc. 2010-04665, has been replaced with version FR Doc. 2010-4991, which will be officially published in the Federal Register on March 10.
http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/

March 2, 2010 Update
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) today released a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) for the establishment of two certification programs for purposes of testing and certifying health IT—one temporary and one permanent. Certification of health IT will provide "assurance to purchasers and other users that an EHR system, or other relevant technology, offers the necessary technological capability, functionality and security to help them meet the meaningful use criteria established for a given phase," according to ONC. "Providers and patients must also be confident that the electronic health IT products and systems they use are secure, can maintain data confidentially and can work with other systems to share information."
http://www.healthimaging.com/
A Message from Dr. David Blumenthal, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
Certification NPRM [PDF - 1.14 MB]

February 20, 2010 Update
A Health and Human Services Department advisory panel has stepped up its efforts to identify standards and services that would open up the nationwide health information network to providers who need simple ways to share health data. Providers as well as states need advice on how to set up health information exchange systems as soon as possible, said Dr. David Blumenthal, the national health IT coordinator. His office recently announced financial awards to state organizations to develop health information exchange systems. Under meaningful use requirements for 2011, providers must be able to share patient data electronically with other providers, pharmacies or test labs.
http://govhealthit.com/

February 18, 2010 Update
The Health IT Policy Committee on Feb. 17 recommended that federal officials ease up the meaningful use requirements, allowing providers to defer some of them and still earn bonuses under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The recommendations included allowing qualified providers and hospitals to defer three criteria in the quality domain, one in the care coordination domain and one in the population health domain. The panel also approved recommendations to require that CPOE be done by the authorizing physician or under his or her authority. Recommendations also included that physicians record visit notes in their patient's electronic health records and information on ethnicity and race must be included in quality reports.
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/

February 16, 2010 Update
Members of a federal health IT advisory group last week proposed to relax the number of measures that would be required for healthcare providers to demonstrate "meaningful use" of electronic health record systems. The Health and Human Service Department's meaningful use workgroup crafted an approach members said strike a "middle ground" between too few and too onerous a set of measures of meaningful use necessary to qualify providers for financial incentives under HHS's health IT adoption plan. The workgroup, which reports to HHS's Health IT Policy Committee, proposed that physicians and hospitals could drop up to six meaningful use measures for 2011.
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/

February 12, 2010 Update
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis today announced a total of nearly $1 billion in Recovery Act awards to help health care providers advance the adoption and meaningful use of health information technology (IT) and train workers for the health care jobs of the future. The awards will help make health IT available to over 100,000 hospitals and primary care physicians by 2014 and train thousands of people for careers in health care and information technology.
http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2010pres/02/20100212a.html

February 11, 2010 Update
The draft version of a Senate jobs bill contains an amendment that would lift certain restrictions to allow physicians practicing in hospital-owned outpatient clinics to receive subsidies for purchasing electronic health records. Under the "meaningful use" guidelines of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, some hospital-based physicians would not be eligible to receive Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments for adopting EHRs. However, some industry officials believe that lawmakers' original intent was to include physicians who work largely in hospital-owned ambulatory care centers. Therefore, the jobs bill amendment would remove the word "outpatient" from a definition of physicians excluded from the incentive payment program.
http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/

February 5, 2010 Update
Dr. David Blumenthal, the national health IT coordinator, said that he wants to "stretch" the healthcare community but not "break" it in setting the conditions under which providers can qualify for financial incentives to use health IT. That's how he described how his office will determine how high to set the bar for physicians and hospitals to become "meaningful users" of electronic health records. Blumenthal spoke at a joint presentation of the Health IT Government Leaders, Health Information Ex change and HIPAA summits Feb. 4. The proposed rule uses an escalator concept, which guides providers toward increasingly sophisticated uses of EHRs with the help of financial incentives and support from health IT technical training centers and state health information exchanges.
http://govhealthit.com/

February 2, 2010 Update
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology in February will make the first set of grant awards available to regional health information technology extension centers under a $598 million program authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. That's according to a notice ONC published on Feb. 2 in the Federal Register. The initial awards are a little behind schedule; National Coordinator David Blumenthal in early December said about 30 grants would be awarded in February with the remainder in March.
http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/

February 1, 2010 Update
President Barack Obama submitted on Monday [Feb. 1] a $3.8 trillion federal budget request to Congress for fiscal year 2011. The president said he plans to make healthcare reform – and healthcare IT in particular – a major part of his long-term plans to put America back on track financially. In keeping with the president's past support of healthcare IT advancement, this year's fiscal budget request includes $110 million to strengthen healthcare IT policy coordination and research activities. Last February, the Administration backed more than $20.6 billion over 10 years to advance healthcare IT adoption in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/

January 26, 2010 Update
HITSP, an organization that sorted through and worked to harmonize healthcare IT standards and whose work provided an early foundation for "meaningful use," will cease to exist in its current form after this week. John Halamka, MD, the face of the panel since its inception in 2005, said the Health IT Standards Panel would disband on Jan. 31, when its contract expired.
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/

January 25, 2010 Update
As the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services receives comments on the proposed meaningful use rule, they are posted for public viewing here. An organization that reviews comments from others as it drafts its own may pick up some new ideas, or wish to further emphasize points that CMS already has received. Here's a sample of comments already on the site:
http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/meaningful_use_comments_arra_stimulus-39677-1.html

January 23, 2010 Update
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will grant Alaska, Kentucky, South Carolina and Wisconsin federal matching funds for EHR implementations. The funding is allotted under The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. According to CMS officials, matching state funding for EHR adoption is "another key step to further states' role in developing a robust U.S. health information technology infrastructure." CMS officials said EHRs will improve the quality of healthcare for citizens. The records make it easier for the many providers who may be treating a Medicaid patient to coordinate care.
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/