ACI EMR Requirements for MACRA MIPS

 

As the previous article on MACRA MIPS notes, the Advancing Care Information category (ACI) now replaces Meaningful Use. Several EHR platforms such as Epic, athenahealth, and eClinicalWorks have already released MU Stage 3 platforms, but many organizations have not yet upgraded to these platforms.

For health care organizations preparing to pursue the MACRA MIPS program, there may be some confusion as to the requirements. Their EHR, whether Epic or others, does not need be upgraded to the Meaningful Use Stage 3 version. The requirements of both Promoting Interoperability programs include a requirement to conduct a MIPS Security Risk Analysis.

The MIPS Performance Category that relates to this is the Advancing Care Information category, otherwise referred to as ACI. There are ACI requirements in the Final Rule that spell out requirements that can only be met with an MU3 certified platform.

However, there is another set of requirements for organizations that have not yet adapted MU3 software. This is referred to as the Advance Care Information Transition Set of Measures. There are only four core measures to achieve the base score in the Transition scoring method, while there are five in the original.

It is important to note that the Transition measure set only applies during the “Transition” year, meaning 2017. Before 2018 arrives clinics will want to have an MU3 certified platform in place.

One of the key differentiators between the two is the requirement and ability to receive and reconcile Transition of Care documents. Clinics need to send these for MU2, but will need to both send and receive next year. Many Electronic Health Record systems do not yet support this functionality.

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