On August 2, 2021, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) (@CMSGov) issued the Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems (IPPS) for Acute Care Hospitals and the Long-Term Care Hospital (LTCH) Prospective Payment System (PPS) Final Rule. In this final rule, CMS adopted policies that continue to focus on the advancement of certified electronic health record technology (CEHRT) utilization and improve interoperability.
What do you Need to Know?
Final changes to the Medicare Promoting Interoperability Program for calendar year (CY) 2022 include:
- Maintaining an EHR reporting period of any continuous 90-days for new and returning participants (eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals [CAHs]) in the Medicare Promoting Interoperability Program for CY 2022;
- Increasing the available bonus points for the Electronic Prescribing Objective’s Query of Prescription Drug Monitoring Program measure from 5 points to 10 points;
- Increasing the minimum scoring threshold from 50 points to 60 points;
- Adopting the Health Information Exchange Bi-Directional Exchange measure, as an alternative to the two existing measures (worth 40 points) under the Health Information Exchange Objective;
- Requiring reporting on four of the Public Health and Clinical Data Exchange Objective measures: Syndromic Surveillance Reporting; Immunization Registry Reporting; Electronic Case Reporting; and Electronic Reportable Laboratory Result Reporting, which is worth up to 10 points;
- The Public Health Registry Reporting and Clinical Data Registry Reporting measures will remain optional and available for a total of 5 bonus points.
- Requiring eligible hospitals and CAHs to attest to having completed an annual assessment via the Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience (SAFER) Guides measure, under the Protect Patient Health Information objective, beginning January 1, 2022; and
- Removing attestation statements 2 and 3 due to similarities between practices described in the statements from the Medicare Promoting Interoperability Program’s prevention of information blocking requirements.
For More Information
To learn more about the new final rule policies, review the final rule, press release, and this fact sheet. Additional materials will be coming to the Promoting Interoperability Programs website soon.