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As We Gaze into the Future: What Will Stage 2 Bring?
As you may know, the Health IT Policy Committee created a Quality Measures Work Group to produce initial recommendations on prioritizing quality measures as part of the Stage 2 criteria slated for fiscal 2013 and 2014.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT is now beginning to do “early reconnaissance” around development of stage 2 meaningful use requirements, according to Dr. David Blumenthal, the national health IT coordinator. At a recent event, he was quoted as saying that the industry “should look forward to a much more robust set of requirements around health information exchange, an exchange that consciously ignores economic relationships, geographic relationships and political jurisdictions. We want information to follow patients.”
It’s anticipated that all the current menu items will become part of the core requirements. In addition, the requirements of Stage 2 will be based on results reported for Stage 1. Health IT Policy Committee member Richard Chapman put it well when he said “We’re going to have to ride our bike and fix it at that the same time here, which is, we’re going to get feedback, but only so much of it we’ll be able to be put into Phase 2. Some will have to be staged later, even into (Stage) 3 or whenever we get there because I think we’re going to find out there could be a showstopper along the way.”
The Meaningful Use Work Group recently met this month and reported the following timetable for Stage 2:
- Workgroup will present their recommendations to the HIT Policy Committee on October 20
- Issue an RFI for comments from the public in November or December of 2010
- Monitor Stage 1 submissions during the Q1 and Q2 of 2011
- Draft recommendations to HIT Policy Committee by Q2 2011
- Final recommendations to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT by late Q2 2011
By all accounts, an aggressive plan is in place to launch Stage 2 standards. Watch this blog for updates on the ever-changing status of this next phase of Meaningful Use.