<\/p>\n
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is giving providers another year to show they’ve met the Stage 2 criteria of the Meaningful Use EHR Incentive Program, an initiative meant to encourage the adoption of electronic health records. Accordingly, the start of Stage 3 will also be pushed back a year.<\/p>\n
Under the updates proposed on Friday, Stage 2 will be extended through 2016, and Stage 3 won’t begin until at least the fiscal year 2017 for hospitals, and January of the same year for physicians and other eligible providers that have by then completed at least two years at Stage 2.<\/p>\n
So what does this mean for Meaningful Use in the coming years?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The change only affects 2016 Meaningful Use requirements. Since\u00a0the CMS announcement doesn’t affect the 2014 requirements for participating in Meaningful Use, payment penalties in 2015 also remain unaffected.<\/p>\n
The delay will allow the CMS and the ONC to help providers meet patient engagement, interoperability, and information exchange demands required under Stage 2, which are proving to be among the most challenging for physicians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is giving providers another year to show they’ve met the Stage 2 criteria of the Meaningful Use EHR Incentive Program, an initiative meant to encourage the adoption of electronic health records. Accordingly, the start of Stage 3 will also be pushed back a year. Under the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-growth"],"yoast_head":"\n