Promoting Interoperability Program Update - CY 2020 IPPS Proposal
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


IPPS Final Rule - Inpatient Medicare Promoting Interoperability Overview
Yesterday, CMS dropped their final rule on the Inpatient Payment System (IPPS). Looking at the aspects dealing with the Promoting Interoperability program, everything is mostly finalized as projected from its NPRM, but I will summarize it here. It should be noted that this rule focused on the inpatient side of the Promoting Interoperability program for eligible hospitals (EHs) and critical access hospitals (CAHs) and not for eligible providers (EPs). This gets confusing given
Got To Get It Done
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


Proposed Changes to MU Program
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
Change in Inpatient eCQM Reporting
Last week, we had highlighted the August issued IPPS/LTCH Final Rule from CMS on our blog. This week we found a good post from Acmeware, a quality reporting and eCQM developer, on the changes CMS was making to eCQM reporting for both the Meaningful Use Inpatient program and Hospital IQR Program. In summary, some of inpatient CQMs have been dropped, and now there are 16 available measures to report on in CY 2017 for the EHR Incentive Program (and just 15 for Hospital IQR). A