Advancing Care Information

Advancing Care information is one of MACRA’s (Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015) categories. In a way, you could say that MACRA replaced the electronic incentive program’s Meaningful Use attestation requirements. Unlike Meaningful Use with different stages and an all or nothing passing rate Advancing Care Information assigns a score based on the measures completed. Some of the measures require numerator and denominators to be provided and a few of them are simply yes or no. Advancing Care Information is also subdivided into three categories: base score, performance score and bonus score.  Base score basically consists of:

• Protect Patient Information
• e-Prescribing
• Provide Patient Access
• Send Summary of Care
• Request/Accept Summary of Care
• Public Health and clinical data registry reporting

A note to keep in mind is that the guidance received links the “Protect Patient Information” category with the completions of a HIPAA Security Risk Assessment and that expectations seem to be that this assessment must be completed annually in order to count as a measure. Performance Score is another of the Advancing Care Information categories and refers to:

• Patient Electronic Access
• Coordination of Care through patient engagement
• Health Information Exchange

The last category refers to immunization registries and reporting to another surveillance registry will award additional points. In short, while the electronic incentives may be a thing of the past and meaningful use as a term only have a few more years the essence of meaningful use and its attestation will stay for a while longer.