On March 30, 2015, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published its proposed rule on Stage 3 meaningful use criteria, which focus on the advanced use of Electronic Health Record (EHR) technology to promote improved outcomes for patients. The proposed rule would establish the requirements that eligible professionals (EPs), eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals must achieve to demonstrate meaningful use, qualify for Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Program incentive payments, and avoid downward Medicare payment adjustments. CMS generally intends for the proposed changes to respond to provider concerns regarding the burden associated with the number of program requirements, the multiple stages of program participation, and the timing of EHR reporting periods. 

Notably, while CMS had previously announced that Stage 3 would begin in 2017, CMS is making Stage 3 compliance optional for 2017. Instead, beginning in 2018 all providers would report on the same definition of meaningful use at the Stage 3 level regardless of their prior participation. The proposed rule also would reduce the overall number of meaningful objectives to eight to focus on advanced use of EHRs (Protect Patient Health Information, Electronic Prescribing (eRx), Clinical Decision Support (CDS), Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE), Patient Electronic Access to Health Information, Coordination of Care through Patient Engagement, Health Information Exchange (HIE), and Public Health and Clinical Data Registry Reporting). In addition, CMS would align clinical quality measure reporting with other CMS quality reporting programs that use certified EHR technology (e.g., the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting and Physician Quality Reporting System programs), enhance alignment across care settings, and remove measures that are redundant or topped out. 

CMS expects net incentive payment spending under the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs to total $3.7 billion between 2017 and 2020 (which reflects $0.8 billion in negative payment adjustments for Medicare providers who do not achieve meaningful use). The comment period ends on May 29, 2015.

In a related development, on March 30 the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) published a proposed rule to establish the 2015 edition health information technology certification criteria, establish a new 2015 Edition Base EHR definition, and modify the ONC Health Information Technology (IT) Certification Program to make it more broadly applicable to other types of health IT health care settings and programs. Among other things, the rule would: (1) adopt new and updated vocabulary and content standards for the structured recording and exchange of health information; (2) include enhanced data portability, transitions of care, and application programming interface capabilities in the 2015 Edition Base EHR definition; (3) align certification criteria with proposals for Stage 3; (4) provide certification to standards for the collection of social, psychological, and behavioral data to address health disparities; (5) provide for the exchange of sensitive health information and for the accessibility of health IT; (6) ensure all health IT presented for certification possesses the relevant privacy and security capabilities; (7) take a series of steps to improve patient safety; and (8) establish surveillance and disclosure requirements. Comments are due May 29, 2015.