Great Chart Comparing Meaningful Use Stage 1 with Stage 2 and 3

Today I came across this really great chart that compares the meaningful use stage 1 requirements with the proposed requirements for meaningful use stage 2 and 3. The comment period is still open for meaningful use stage 2 and 3 so make your voice heard.

Here’s the roadmap as described by John Halamka:
Jan, 12, 2011: release draft Meaningful Use criteria and request for comment
Feb-March, 2011: analyze comment submissions and revise Meaningful Use draft criteria
March, 2011: present revised draft Meaningful Use criteria to the HIT Policy Committee
2Q11: CMS report on initial Stage 1 Meaningful Use submissions
3Q11: Final HIT Policy Committee recommendations on Stage 2 Meaningful Use
4Q11: CMS Meaningful Use NPRM

See the comparison chart embedded below.


About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

11 Comments

  • Please remind folks that this is NOT the public comment period on the Stage 2 meaningful use measures for CMS. This is the comment period for the Stage 2 meaningful use measures as conceived by the HIT Policy Committee’s meaningful use workgroup. They will take the comments, refine their recommendations to the HITPC, who will decide what to take/keep and then ultimately make the recommendations to HHS. Then CMS will then issue a Notice of Proposed Rule-Making on Stage 2 for official public comment, resulting in the final Stage 2 rule issued by CMS.

    People are not clear on who defines meaningful use and that this workgroup, and its public comments, is just one of several venues for HHS to get feedback,input and comments from stakeholders on meaningful use. No more, no less.

  • Plus the Stage 1 initial meaningful use submissions report will only be for Medicare so will not include potentially important data about Medicaid providers’ ability to meet Stage 1 of meaningful use (such as community health centers, tribal clinics, rural health centers, children’s hospitals, nurse practitioners, dentists, certified nurse-midwives, cancer hospitals, Physician’s assistants and all the hospitals in Puerto Rico and the territories). That’s a lot of providers for whom CMS will have zero meaningful use data before having to issue the Stage 2 NPRM.

  • All of the acronyms and abbreviations are so confusing, as well are the different stages and what they mean to the end provider. The overall impression it gives is that this whole thing is still in a “shenanigans” phase. Maybe it’s not, but it just says to the average intelligence user, “another screwed up government program.”

  • Jess,
    Thanks for the clarifications. They are much appreciated. No doubt this committee is only one of the places HHS/ONC will look for feedback, but it’s a substantial voice in that process. At least based on meaningful use stage 1.

    That is really interesting as far as the Medicaid perspective on meaningful use. Part of the issue there is that Medicaid is handled state by state. I still haven’t seen many good details about how each state will be handling the Medicaid EMR stimulus money. That would be interesting info since each state will probably be a little bit different.

    Dr. West,
    I wouldn’t say it’s shenanigans, but translating the government requirements is harder than it should be. That’s why they say that money from the government isn’t really “free money.” There’s a price to pay for it.

  • That’s a really great resource Jess. Thanks for sharing.

    Although I must admit that the thought of evaluating what the 50 different states are doing for this makes my head spin.

  • “That’s why they say that money from the government isn’t really “free money.” There’s a price to pay for it.”

    … It’s also not from the “government” it is from the tax payers… just to clarify.

  • John, I recently became involved at my employers request to get involved in MU updates. Could you tell me, or send a link to the document in this post? It’s almost impossible to “back track” to find the original document on the ONC website. Very Much Appreciated! GEO

  • Hi George,
    The document in this post wasn’t from ONC, but was from someone else I believe. ONC would never put something this useful and easy to read out there;-)

    Plus, this document is pretty outdated since it was from January of last year and a lot has changed since then with the release of the proposed rule for meaningful use stage 2 which includes changes to meaningful use stage 1.

    I’d suggest you take a look through the meaningful use monday posts: http://www.emrandhipaa.com/tag/meaningful-use-monday/ It has links to the latest and greatest rule along with much easier to digest discussion of the details of meaningful use.

  • Hi John, Do you have information or updated news on Dentists for Stages 1 and 2, after attesting for the AIU? Will Dentists be able to qualify for reimbursements for Stages 1 and 2? Thanks!

  • Vanessa,
    Good question. I haven’t seen any updates that really apply well to dentists. You can go after the Medicaid money if you have medicaid users. I’ve seen that for dentists. I’ll see if I can find other information.

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