CMS meaningful use revisions must synch with other regulations

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has to make sure that changes it makes to the final version of the proposed meaningful use rule mesh with other rules for standards and certification, as well as the recently published proposal for a certification process.

"There really is a dance among the regulations," said Tony Trenkle, CMS director of e-health and standards, at a meeting March 17 of the Health IT Policy Committee, which advises the Health and Human Services Department, and CMS has to keep this interplay in mind as it considers what to incorporate into the meaningful use rule. "The more complexity you build into this process, the more difficult it becomes to launch the program quickly," he said. The combination of meaningful use and the other rules and regulation is important because they lay out the requirements that healthcare providers must accomplish to document meaningful use to qualify for incentives, the functions that electronic health records must be capable of to support meaningful use and the process for an organization to validate the capability of an EHR.