Healthcare IT Update

While waiting for CMS guidelines, some practices have dragged heels on EHR adoption

Practices that have been waiting for CMS to define the term “meaningful use” are finally in luck. But as is always the case when the feds are involved, don’t look for a quick one-sentence definition.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill of 2009 (ARRA) offers annual bonuses to practices that show “meaningful use” of electronic health records, and in 2015, practices that aren’t showing meaningful use will face penalties. However, the government was slow to issue a definition of the term “meaningful use,” causing some physicians to delay  adoption of EHRs because they didn’t want to risk being a non-meaningful user.

On Dec. 29, CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology announced that the definition was finally available for public comment. “CMS’s proposed regulation would define and specify how to demonstrate ‘meaningful…