CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt made healthcare headlines when he announced on January 11, at the J.P. Morgan Annual Health Care Conference that the "Meaningful Use program as it has existed, will now be effectively over". The ending of that sentence, which was often excluded from the headlines, is important - "and replaced with something better". The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) is advancing the goal of moving Medicare physician reimbursement away from fee for service payments toward payments based on healthcare value and improved outcomes. In a rare move, CMS released the Electronic Health Record Incentive Program - Stage 3 and Modifications to Meaningful Use in 2015 through 2017 Final Rule with Meaningful Use Stage 3 open for public comment to inform the process of writing MACRA regulations.

MACRA includes two ways to participate in CMS quality programs - the Merit-based Incentive Payment Systems (MIPS) and Alternative Payment Models (APMs), such as accountable care organizations (ACOs). In an effort to streamline CMS quality programs, MIPS is expected to combine elements of the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), Value-based Payment Modifier (VM) and Meaningful Use into a single program based on quality, resource use, clinical practice improvement and meaningful use of certified EHR technology. Mr. Slavitt's initial comments as well as follow-up comments with Dr. Karen DeSalvo in a CMS blog posted a week after the JP Morgan conference point to a couple of key themes in improving healthcare outcomes - care coordination including closing the referral loop and patient engagement. Many of the practices with which we work find it challenging to meet these technology and infrastructure-dependent measures. Reducing the cost of patient care while improving health outcomes will require data sharing and quality reporting in real-time, as often as possible, to inform best practices in patient care in a much more timely manner than we have seen historically.

In the CMS blog EHR Incentive Programs: Where We Go Next posted on January 19, 2016, Mr. Slavitt and Dr. DeSalvo make several important points.  

Meaningful Use for eligible professionals is not dead; it is transitioning. We highly recommend that you continue the meaningful use efforts you have started until we receive official notification from CMS to do otherwise.