Congressional budget deal relaxes meaningful-use requirements
Modern Healthcare February 9, 2018
President Donald Trump Friday morning signed Congress’ government funding bill that includes measures to ease meaningful-use requirements and to expand telehealth access for Medicare beneficiaries.
The meaningful-use bill, introduced last summer, could make meeting electronic health record meaningful-use requirements easier since they no longer have to become stricter over time.
That’s a change to the way things have been since the passage of the HITECH Act, which required the HHS secretary to make meaningful-use stipulations increasingly “stringent.”
With that provision of the HITECH Act, legislators intended every-increasing regulations to encourage providers to improve their use of EHRs. But in reality, providers have faced uncertain and unstable requirements and deadlines, and some have had trouble getting EHRs in place at all.
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