Meaningful Use stage 3 standards are beginning to make an appearance. The 2016 meaningful use timeline will require hospitals and physicians to integrate more clinical decision support into their practices and care coordination. EHRs will need to perform more complex functions. Such functions include medication lists for drug interactions and alerts for “never” combinations of medications.

Stage three is still 4 years away, however the public-private advisory group wanted to begin to review the coming standards and signal industry improvements including patient engagement, quality, safety, efficiency and population health. Some of the recommendations are still just concepts and are still evolving.

Dr. Paul Tang, committee vice chair and chair of the meaningful use panel commented on some the stage 3 draft recommendations: “We’re looking for an externally maintained list of drug-drug interactions with a higher positive predictive value and that is meaningful about the patient so that the physician will pay attention to it.

To read more about Meaningful Use Stage 3 click here