HIMSS: Coordinated effort needed for MU, ICD-10 switch and other initiatives

NEW ORLEANS—Many healthcare stakeholders will have to coordinate their efforts to achieve the goals of current quality reporting and interoperability eHealth initiatives from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), according to a presentation from a panel of CMS representatives at the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) annual conference.

This means providers, payers and vendors must collaborate on electronic standards programs, even if these groups “appear to be in separate lanes on that electronic highway,” said Chris Stahlecker, director of the administrative simplification group at CMS’ Office of E-Health Standards and Services (eHSS).

Though there are a number of quality reporting programs—including the Inpatient Quality Reporting Program, Hospital Value-Based Purchasing and Meaningful Use at the hospital level, and a number of others at the eligible professional level—CMS is trying to minimize the burden by synchronizing reporting periods and utilizing electronic clinical quality measures data submitted once for multiple programs, according to Kate Goodrich, MD, acting director of the quality measurement and health assessment group in CMS’ Center for Clinical Standards and Quality.

A recent analysis of the Meaningful Use program found that 161,890 eligible professionals and 2,653 hospitals had attested, according to Elizabeth Holland, director of the health IT initiatives group at eHSS.

The vast majority of professionals and all hospitals have attested successfully, though Holland noted that post-payment audits, which began in July 2012, have found a number of organizations are not successfully maintaining supporting documentation used in the completion of attestations. CMS will soon issue a guidance on the retention of supporting documentation, she said.

As for the conversion to ICD-10, Stahlecker assured the audience that the Oct. 1, 2014, deadline for compliance is firm.