The April 3 Health IT Policy Committee meeting promises to be interesting. The committee will hear presentations from two subgroups of the meaningful use workgroup, one dealing with the potential consolidation of meaningful use measures for Stage 3 and the other with the concept of “deeming” for eligible hospitals.
The consolidation subgroup has been working on a proposal to narrow 43 objectives proposed in the Stage 3 request for comment down to 25 objectives.
The deeming concept goes something like this: if you are achieving great measurable outcomes or improvement, the only way you can do that is by satisfying relevant section of meaningful use and being a sophisticated user of health IT. Therefore, in order to promote innovation, reduce the reporting burden, and reward good performance, ONC would deem high performers (or significant improvers) in satisfaction of a subset of MU objectives as an optional pathway to qualifying for meaningful use.
From the slides for the April 3 meeting, here are some example criteria for deeming for eligible hospitals:
Demonstrate high (top 30th percentile) or improved performance (20th percentile reduction of gap between last year's performance and top quartile) for all of the below:
Patient safety (pick 2 from)
• Clostridium difficile Infection (outcome measure)
• Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infection (outcome measure)
• Central Line-Associated Blood Stream Infection (outcome measure)
• MRSA (outcome measure)
• Specific Surgical Site Infection (SSI) Outcome Measure
• Severe sepsis and septic shock: Management bundle
• Late sepsis or meningitis in very low birth weight (VLBW) neonates (risk-adjusted)
• Measure of pressure ulcers
Care coordination (pick 2 from)
• Experience of care (from HCAHPS)
• Hospital-wide-all-cause unplanned readmission measure (HWR)
• CTM-3, 3-item care transition
We’ll report on how the Policy Committee reacts to these proposals and other significant development from the meeting.
