Federal Interoperability Roadmap: The Impact to Providers (Part 1)

This first of a three-part series outlines components of the ONC’s recently released Interoperability Roadmap to help providers understand what it means to them as they continue in the EHR Incentive Programs.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released the Shared Interoperability Roadmap last month. This roadmap, Connecting Health and Care for the Nation, describes the ONC’s vision and framework for connectivity and health IT infrastructure between today and the end of 2024. This document will be an important guide as Meaningful Use continues to progress toward Stage 3 and health IT furthers its impact on healthcare. CORHIO will outline several components important to Meaningful Users in this newsletter and continuing in December and January.

Half of Medicare Payments Shifting to Quality Models
There are a number of milestones (see page 52 in the above link) that impact Meaningful Use in the Roadmap. First, to develop a supportive regulatory and payment environment, 50 percent of Medicare payments to providers will shift to models “that reward quality and value” by the end of 2018. Providers participating in Meaningful Use are on the right track to successfully participate in these programs, because of their commitment to reviewing measures that positively impact patient health.

Two-Factor Authentication for Patient Portals
By 2017, to create a verifiable identity and authentication system for participants, 65 percent of healthcare organizations should be allowing access to patient portals through secure systems that include username, password and knowledge-based attribution. CORHIO describes this as “two-factor authorization” and many meaningful users have already adopted this technology.

Improved Technology for Data Capture
The third milestone that impacts providers is the capacity to collect data elements associated with priority data domains and use them for a variety of purposes. Meaningful Use providers are already doing some of this work, and this effort calls upon the resources of technology developers and standards development entities to define approaches that create standards for the data code sets and to advance consumer-friendly technology. All this really means is that there should be better technology coming to help providers capture and review data within their EHR systems…and that is good news.

More on the interoperability roadmap and what it means to providers will be provided in the newsletter next month.