Lost amid the ONC release of its 2nd draft of TEFCA and extending the comment period on the Cures proposal, CMS released its annual Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) rule, and they used it to update their requirements for the Promoting Interoperability (PI) program for hospitals. This proposal does not address the MIPS program for eligible professionals, but it is for the hospitals in their PI (i.e., the old Meaningful Use) program. However, I think eligible clinici

I have had several discussions recently asking "why aren't more developers certifying for 2015 Edition" and I thought I would explore this subject and give some reasons why developers should stop waiting and start on 2015 Edition work. I have written multiple times about the slow rollout of 2015 Edition certified products so I don't find the current situation surprising. In fact, I think there are two key reasons for this. 1. The CMS habit of changing requirements. Regulatory

Yesterday CMS released their annual NPRM for Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) for acute care hospitals and long-term care hospitals, and they used the opportunity to propose several changes to Meaningful Use Program. Read on to see what has changed. A rose by any other name... First, they are renaming the official name to EHR Incentive Program to Promoting Interoperability (PI). All Medicaid incentives end by CY 2021 so it make sense to drop the “incentive” part, b

The good and the bad and the ugly of ONC 2015 Edition certification.

With the launch of 2015 Edition certification testing back in April 2016, we are now nearing the two year mark of this 2015 Edition certification period in health IT. With the new year here, it would be a good time to take a fresh look at what is currently certified on the CHPL for 2015 Edition. Over the years, I have tracked the state of EHR certification at various points to give us some historical perspective, and I want to see where we stand and perhaps guess at where we

In April 2016, ONC-ACBs opened their doors for 2015 Edition certification. We are now nearing the one year mark, and it is a good time to take stock at how certification is proceeding and what types of products are getting certified. As we noted last year, the launch was far slower than with 2011 Edition and 2014 Edition, but it was assumed things would pick up, especially with the release of the MIPS rule. Yet, the pace of actual certifications has remained significantly beh

A few weeks ago, ONC made some nice enhancements to their CHPL. They have added specific pages for listing decertification (not the pages a developer wants to be on) and also finally adds some downloadable CSV delimited files for showing all certified products (under the Resources tab). Previously, you could only get the full list via a XML file which was not easy for human reading, and this is a much improved . Their list serv notification is copied below. NEW Certified Heal

For October 2016, ONC updated the following test procedure, companion guides, test tools and other aspects related to their 2015 Edition testing program. Summary of changes and commentary of potential impact to developers as determined by Chart Lux staff are included. Links to the ONC test procedure and companion guides are here: https://www.healthit.gov/policy-researchers-implementers/2015-edition-test-method TEST PROCEDURE § 170.315(f)(1): Transmission to Immunizations Regi

For September 2016, ONC updated the following test procedure, companion guides, test tools and other aspects related to their 2015 Edition testing program. Links to documents or relevant release emails are include below as appropriate. Summary of changes and commentary of potential impact to developers as determined by Chart Lux staff are included. TEST PROCEDURE § 170.315(a)(5): Demographics Summary of Change: Explicitly clarified that health IT system under test must be abl

Lost amidst the intrigue and questions around the new MIPS and APM programs from CMS is the pressing issue of the very slow rollout of 2015 Edition certified EHRs and how this could impact meeting the deadlines imposed by these new CMS value payment programs. The release of the 2015 Edition criteria is now the third major offering of criteria from the ONC (excluding the 2014 Edition Release 2 which was more of a minor release). Each launch has also coincided with a new progra