The first thing to understand about MACRA is that its impact is limited to Medicare clinicians. Despite this limited application, it would be well worthwhile for all health IT vendors who deal with EHRs to be familiar with its provisions, especially with regard to the Meaningful Use stipulations.
The Advancing Care provision within MACRA supersedes the old Meaningful Use program.
Read the full article at: healthstandards.com
Some great insights into MACRA by CIO David Chou in the Health Standards blog.
Corepoint Health Product Manager Rob Brull wrote extensively about MACRA on our blog back in May, in MIPS replacing Meaningful Use for physicians.
With MACRA, the HHS aims to address 3 health IT priorities moving forward:
- Improved interoperability along with the ability of physicians and patients to easily move and receive information
- Increased flexibility as compared to the Meaningful Use program
- User-friendly technology designed around physician workflows
More specifically, the Advancing Care Program within MIPS is touted as being more patient-centric, practice-driven, and having a strong focus on connectivity. Emphasis will be on interoperability, information exchange, with importance placed on security of PHI and a requirement to give patients access to their health information through APIs.
We highly recommend reading both David Chou’s article and Rob’s post to get a good sense of the intent of the bill, and how we’re moving away from the incentive-laden approach of Meaningful Use, which has dominated most health IT initiatives the past 4 years.
