ONC Health IT Certification Program Updates

02/13/2019

ONC Releases Notice of Proposed Rulemaking

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) issued a proposed rule to support seamless and secure access to, exchange of, and use of electronic health information (EHI).

The proposed rule is designed to increase innovation and competition by giving patients and their healthcare providers secure access to health information and new tools, allowing for more choice in care and treatment. It calls on the healthcare industry to adopt standardized application programming interfaces (APIs), which would allow individuals to securely and easily access structured EHI using applications for smartphones and other mobile devices.

The proposed rule is posted on HealthIT.gov for review and has been submitted to the Office of the Federal Register (OFR) for publication in the Federal Register. The document may vary slightly from the published document if minor editorial changes have been made during the OFR review process. The document published in the Federal Register is the official HHS-approved document and ONC encourages stakeholders to submit comments consistent with the methods outlined in the Federal Register once it is published. We'll update HealthIT.gov once the proposed rule is published by the Federal Register.

Now Available: 2019 CMS QRDA III EP/Eligible Clinician IG Addendum

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released an addendum to the 2019 CMS Quality Reporting Document Architecture (QRDA) Category III Implementation Guide (IG) for Eligible Clinicians and Eligible Professionals Programs to support Calendar Year (CY) 2019 electronic clinical quality measure (eCQM), Improvement Activity, and Promoting Interoperability reporting. The addendum includes an updated universal unique identifier (UUID) table to reflect the 2019 performance period eCQM specifications that occurred as a result of the CY 2019 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule.

The 2019 QRDA III IG and addendum provide technical instructions for reporting for:

Quality Payment Program: Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and Advanced Alternative Payment Models (APMs)
Comprehensive Primary Care Plus (CPC+)
MIPS Promoting Interoperability Performance Category

The addendum also includes Improvement Activity identifiers and Promoting Interoperability Performance Category objectives and measure identifiers finalized by CMS for the MIPS CY 2019 performance period based on the CY 2019 Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule released in November 2018. For 2019, MIPS eligible clinicians and groups are required to submit data for a full calendar year for the Quality performance category, a minimum of 90 continuous days for the Improvement Activities performance category, and a minimum of 90 continuous days for the Promoting Interoperability performance category.

QRDA-Related Resources:

Additional QRDA-related resources, as well as current and past IGs, are found on the Electronic Clinical Quality Improvement Resource Center.

For questions related to the QRDA IGs and/or Schematrons visit the ONC QRDA JIRA Issue Tracker.

For questions related to Quality Payment Program/MIPS data submissions visit the Quality Payment Program website, contact by phone 1-866-288-8292, or email QPP@cms.hhs.gov.

Test Method Updates

2015 Edition Test Method Resources

The Master Table of Related and Required Criteria, effective 2/05/2019 new version 1.3 was uploaded to reflect modifications to the name change of the EHR Incentive Programs to the Promoting Interoperability Programs, and modifications to the name change of the ACI Transition and ACI to Promoting Interoperability Transition and Promoting Interoperability. The master table can be accessed on all applicable criteria on the ONC 2015 edition test method webpage.

For more information, visit the ONC health IT testing and certification requirements or share your questions at ONC.Certification@hhs.gov.