Get Ready for EHR and NwHIN Rules

Stage 2 Meaningful Use and NwHIN Governance Rules

Sometime in the next month three long awaited proposed rules from CMS and the ONC should be published. You can see below the links to the Unified Regulatory Agenda submission. These rules are under review by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and should be published in the Federal Register within the next month or so:

Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record Incentive Program--Stage 2 (CMS-0044-P)

New and Revised Standards, Implementation Specifications, and Certification Criteria for Electronic Health Record Technology

Governance for a Nationwide Health Information Network

The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is located within the OMB. OIRA has a great dashboard that gives an overview of rules under review. This dashboard graphically presents information about rules under OIRA review through an easy-to-use interactive display, and it allows the public to sort rules by agency, length of review, state of rulemaking, economic significance, and international impacts. I will be following the rule making process closely and posting updates as information is available.

The NwHIN Governance rule is being done with a Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM). This is a step that entails publishing the agency's initial analysis of the subject matter, often asking for early public input on key issues. Any data or communications regarding the upcoming rule would be made available to the public for review. Occasionally, a board of potentially affected parties is comprised to do give-and-take bargaining over rulemaking subject-matter which would otherwise result in deadlocked opposition by an interested party. This is commonly called "negotiated rulemaking", and usually results in a more custom-tailored proposed rule.

Stage 2 Meaningful Use will be deferred for an extra year for those who attested in 2011