AHIMA shows support for stage 3 MU ruling
The comment period for the stage 3 meaningful use requirements issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ends on May 29, 2015. Although the responses to the new MU ruling have been both positive and negative, the American Health Information Management Association has reported satisfaction with the proposed objectives.
Stage 3 MU comes just in time for ICD-10
Katherine Downing, director of HIM practice excellence at the AHIMA, told EHR Intelligence that the organization approves of the new ruling's emphasis on securing patient health data. Requiring a yearly risk assessment is essential to protecting patient privacy and health information.
Many providers do not have the health technology that adheres to the new stage 3 MU objectives. This presents practices with the opportunity to update or exchange their current system with one that works for both stage 3 MU and the upcoming ICD-10 transition. More providers and hospitals are likely to prepare for ICD-10 implementation with an updated system because they also need to have one for meaningful use.
However, Downing pointed out that government agencies should prevent any more ICD-10 delays, as postponing it for another year will mean that the transition from ICD-9 will take place the same year as the implementation of stage 3 meaningful use standards. This could be extremely overwhelming for practices.
The patient portal is essential to engaging patients and improving patient outcomes. The development of user-friendly health IT that enables important health documents to be accessed and downloaded by patients at home is crucial to enhanced care quality. The stage 3 ruling requires that 25 percent of patients in practices actively use a patient portal to become more involved in their health.
"If we are going to look at this 25 percent mark that's now in stage 3 – it is going to take a bit of a shift for us in healthcare," Downing explained. "We have always been focused on what the providers need to document and how we can make this easy for the physicians. Now we also need to think about the consumer – the patient – and how this information is going to display to the patient. How do we turn this into a user-friendly document?"
The potential for challenges
Increasing the number of communication tools provided by doctors improves face-to-face patient-physician interactions. However, these tools have to ensure that messaging through the portal is secure or there could be serious privacy issues within the industry. Privacy and security is also essential for electronic health records, promoting movement toward telehealth.
Although there are many benefits that can come from meeting the 25 percent rule, there are likely to be a lot of providers who experience difficulty adhering to this requirement. If practices feel that they will not be able to hit this 25 percent, they should submit a comment before the deadline in May. If enough providers express their concerns to the CMS, it is possible that the agency will revise the percentage to around 15 percent. Downing believes that it should be raised from the current 5 percent, but that the CMS may be willing to take the increase slower.
In addition to the 25 percent patient portal use requirement, the stage 3 MU ruling asks that providers increase computerized order entry and electronic prescribing by 80 percent. Healthcare IT News noted that if providers can accomplish this, not only will it ensure that office workflows are enhanced, but it will also allow more quality face-to-face time during appointments.
Many other large health care organizations support the recent stage 3 MU ruling along with the AHIMA. However, as there are still providers who feel that certain objectives are challenging, it is still likely that the CMS will revise multiple sections of the ruling.
