Moving on to Stage 2 of Meaningful Use

From Modern Healthcare

Moving on to Stage 2 of meaningful use

Just as the starting gun is about to fire for hospitals seeking to meet Stage 1 criteria for the meaningful use of electronic health records in the first payment year of the stimulus law's health information technology subsidy program, healthcare policy advisers to the federal government are talking about time frames for ratcheting up criteria for Stage 2.During a meeting this week of the federally chartered Health IT Policy Committee, George Hripcsak, co-chairman of a special work group on the meaningful-use criteria, went over a proposed schedule for developing the second round of standards providers must meet to get paid for effectively using an EHR system. The first "payment year" begins Oct. 1 for hospitals and Jan. 1, 2011, for eligible office-based physicians

— Joseph Conn / HITS staff writer