Important: Change to MU Stage 1 Core Measures in 2014
This message is for clients who will be attesting for Meaningful Use Stage 1 in 2014. If you are attesting for Stage 2 or do not plan to attest at all, you may disregard. Please take careful note of the two items below.
1. As of January 1, 2014, patient portal adoption is a Core Measure for Meaningful Use Stage 1.
It will now be necessary to provide patients the ability to view, download and transmit their health information online within 4 business days of the information being available to the Eligible Professional via a certified patient portal for 50% of all patients seen by an attesting provider.
As a result of this, any providers who intend to attest for Meaningful Use Stage 1 will need to implement a Patient Portal and begin utilizing it as quickly as possible.
We have developed a HotFix for all clients who are currently on version 4.52, 4.52.1, or 4.53. The HotFix will move the Portal Access measure on the Stage 1 report from Menu Measure 5 to become Core Measure 12 and will substitute the measure “Provide electronic copy of health information upon request” with new measure: “Provide patients the ability to view, download and transmit their health information”. The threshold will increase from 10% to 50%. The logic in the measure calculation remains the same. To implement this fix, please contact gSupport@gmed.com.
As we have seen through various regulatory publications, finding the right information is often a challenging task. The majority of links and references on the CMS website still list patient portal access as Menu Measure 5 with a 10% threshold for Stage 1. As such, we would like to call your attention to the supplemental documents covering the change to be used as a reference published most recently in the month of April:
2. gMed would also like to remind you of an important upcoming deadline for 2014 Meaningful Use participants:
An Eligible Professional who is going to be attesting for Meaningful Use for the first time this year and is not able to begin their reporting period by July 1st, 2014, will be required to submit a hardship exception BEFORE July 1st, 2014 in order to avoid penalties.
Here you will find the link to the exception application on the CMS website:
If a Provider completes their exception application successfully, attests for a reporting period that begins after July 1st, and successfully meets all the MU Stage 1 requirements, they will still be eligible for incentives.
For more information on gPortal, gMed's patient portal or gAdvisor, gMed's HITECH Advising service, please contact Salesteam@gmed.com.
For brochures and other collateral that can be printed onsite and distributed to promote portal use to patients, please contact: Marketing@gmed.com.