ehr onc final certification - Department of Health Care Services

Along these same lines, another commenter recommended that EHR technology should
be tested and certified only to the clinical quality measures applicable to the medical
specialties of the eligible professionals that the EHR technology is intended to support
and to whom it is marketed. Other commenters expressed concerns about timing and that
a significant amount of effort would be required to reprogram Complete EHRs and EHR
Modules to capture, calculate, and report the final meaningful use Stage 1 measures.
Many commenters also stated that the proposed quality measures are not yet ready for
automated reporting, that a significant amount of work is still required by the measure
developer community, and that the value sets for these quality measures have not been
validated. Several commenters objected to the reference to “States” in the certification
criterion and recommended that it be removed. These commenters contended that the
certification criterion should be limited to the “federal requirements” and further that it
was unrealistic to expect Complete EHR and EHR Module developers to also comply
with 50 separate State requirements as a condition of certification.
Response. We understand that CMS has worked to significantly increase the
availability of a number of electronic measure specifications that are associated with
specific clinical quality measures. In light of the final approach CMS has taken with
respect to clinical quality measures for meaningful use Stage 1, we have revised this
certification to better align it with the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs
final rule requirements. We also agree with those commenters that requested we
explicitly focus the report of clinical quality measures certification criterion, and the
certification criteria in general, on Federal requirements and have removed the reference
to “or States” in this certification criterion.
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