Meaningful Use

The newly-minted National Coordinator for Health IT offered his thoughts on interoperability, quality reporting, privacy and security, EHR certification, innovation and more.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is launching a central data repository for public health agency and clinical data registry reporting.

"As I've said many times, one of the great challenges we have is that the 2015 Edition final rule has an enormous scope extending beyond meaningful use with the notion that it can be coupled to every government healthcare IT program," writes John Halamka, MD.  

Eligible hospitals can apply for hardship exceptions for issues related to EHR vendors, infrastructure, natural disasters and more.

More than a dozen medical groups including the American Medical Association, Medical Group Management Association, American College of Surgeons and others, have sent the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on August 22 imploring it to quickly make the proposed 90-day reporting period a final rule.

For meaningful use and MACRA, the government uses an IEEE description of interoperability that pre-dates today’s crop of EHRs. Whether or not that will carry the healthcare industry into the future is a matter of some debate.

This past Friday, Karen DeSalvo, MD, officially stepped down as National Coordinator, passing the baton to her second-in-command, Vindell Washington, MD. The former principal deputy national coordinator has been with ONC since January 2016.

DeSalvo made her way from New Orleans to Washington and while serving as National Coordinator, she realigned ONC and delivered visionary strategic plans for interoperability and health IT, before President Obama nominated her to a key HHS post.

Healthcare IT News traveled to Epic's Verona, Wisconsin, campus and met with the company's elusive founder, as well as with Epic Vice President Peter DeVault. The two talked a lot about interoperability – but perhaps not enough to quell critics.

HIMSS Analytics' eighth annual study sees room for more turnover as practices look for partners to help with clinical practice improvement activities.