MU Stage 2 to Focus on Sharing, Patient Engagement, CSC Report Says

Healthcare providers should double down on developing capabilities to coordinate care, engage with their patients, and electronically capture the data needed for quality reporting. They are likely to be required in the proposed rule for stage 2 of meaningful use, expected later this month.

The abilities of hospitals and physicians to enable patients to view and download their information and transmit summary of care records when patients move among care settings remain the most challenging to meet the next stage of meaningful use, according to a report from IT vendor CSC.

“The importance of these requirements goes beyond meeting the incentives for meaningful use,” said report authors Erica Drazen, managing director, and Jane Metzger, principal researcher, CSC’s Global Institute for Emerging Healthcare Practices. These requirements are also the path “to winning under the new Medicare payment rules and becoming accountable for the care of a population,” they wrote in the report...