Public Health Agencies (PHAs): Get Ready for Stage 3 Meaningful Use Public Health Reporting Requirements

BACKGROUND:  The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) authorized incentive payments to healthcare providers to promote the adoption and meaningful use (MU) of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) through the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record Incentive Program. This federal program that began in 2011, is administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and is divided into three stages, each of which defines the minimum requirements that the healthcare providers must meet to qualify for the incentive payments.  The program is currently in Stage 2; however the Stage 3 requirements were recently published and will be effective in 2018.  In Stage 3,  eligible professionals (EPs), Eligible Hospitals (EHs) and Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) would be required to attest successfully to any combination of two and four measures respectively from amongst;  Immunization, Syndromic Surveillance, Electronic Case Report, Public Health Registry, Clinical Data Registry, and Electronic Reportable Lab Results, with the latter applying to Eligible hospitals (EHs) and Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) only. METHODS:   The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) has taken the lead to establish the Stage 3 MU Public Health Reporting Requirements Task Force, with representatives from the Public Health Community including State, Local, and Tribal public health departments and organizations. This task force is working to develop consensus-based guidance for Public Health Agencies (PHAs) to implement the processes required to support Stage 3 meaningful use, including-declaration of readiness, registration of intent, ongoing submission, on-boarding, and acknowledgement. RESULTS:   The Task Force has set up two sub-groups to develop specific guidance on the Registration and Onboarding Processes and the Public Health Specialized Registries. CONCLUSIONS: The guidance developed by the Task Force will be shared with state, local and tribal PHAs before the start of Stage 3 MU implementation, so that they can adopt these as per their jurisdictional needs and practices. Detailed guidance and examples will be shared at the conference.