HMS has reworked its blog to feature timely stories and insights that impact our partners in Public Health. Check back often for entries on the challenges and benefits of Meaningful Use regulations—including commentary on Syndromic Surveillance implementation. We’ll provide a mix of our opinions, guest commentary, and links to articles that we hope you’ll find to be useful as you move forward with Meaningful Use Compliance.

This week, we’re sharing an article about the core use objectives of Stage 2 Meaningful Use. Stay tuned next week for our thoughts on the article and its implications for Public Health.

— kjh

From  Penn …

Proposed Stage 2 requirements raise the bar for providers

By Christine LaFave Grace

Posted: February 23, 2012 – 5:15 pm ET

The proposed Stage 2 meaningful-use requirements raise the bar for hospitals and eligible professionals on the use of computerized physician order entry, electronic prescribing and electronic recording of several patient-health measures, according to CMS officials.

Four health information technology and policy officials with the CMS previewed the Stage 2 measures in a presentation at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s 2012 Conference and Exhibition in Las Vegas on Thursday morning. On Thursday afternoon, the proposed requirements were published on the Office of the Federal Register’s website (PDF). They are slated to be published in the Federal Register on March 7.

You can also find the copy of the proposed rules for comment here …