The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently announced its plans to reduce the 2015 Meaningful Use (MU) reporting period requirement from 365 to just 90 days. Many healthcare experts are of the view that the federal agency is taking this step (in addition to others) to lighten the burden on care providers.

The announcement
The announcement was made towards the end of January, and gave much needed relief to eligible hospitals (EHs) and professionals (EPs) who had faced immense difficulty in meeting the MU Stage 2 transition-of-care requirements.


 The options
Through this requirement, an EP would need to exchange a care summary with a minimum of one other provider or third party possessing a certified Electronic Health Record (EHR) system; moreover, the receiver’s system must be different from that of the senders. As a secondary option, the EP could instead carry out a successful care summary exchange test with an EHR selected by CMS.

 The challenge
However, for the secondary test, the provider needs an EHR which can directly transmit messages to a different EHR; and that too via a DirectTrust recognized health information service provider (HISP). The challenge for the provider would be that of his EHR’s compatibility with the accredited HISPs.

 The solution
A CMS FAQ file in response to this query highlights that if the provider faces such an issue, they could be given leniency to perform the required test outside of the EHR reporting bracket, provided that they perform the test before the reporting year ends.
The finalization of the 90 day reporting period for MU would be vital in providing physicians the added time to meet this challenge.

Other options
Practices will also be able to use other methods of care summary exchange between different EHRs. There is also the option of using a health information exchange organization (HIO) for this process; however, many regional RHIOs are not fully functional at the moment.

That is why federal health agencies have continued to reiterate that interoperability is an important target, and one they are committed to achieve.