Morning Headlines 4/12/15

Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Electronic Health Record Incentive Program– Modifications to Meaningful Use in 2015 through 2017

HHS publishes a revision to the Meaningful Use program that shortens the 2015 reporting period to just 90 days and reduces the requirement that five percent threshold for view/download/transmit to just a single patient.

Report To Congress, April 2015:  Report on Health Information Blocking

ONC submits its congressionally-mandated report on EHR vendor information blocking, acknowledging that there is only anecdotal evidence of information blocking practices, but also establishing a list of behaviors it would interpret to be detrimental to national information exchange efforts, including charging for information exchanges and developing systems in non-standard ways. In its conclusion, ONC  recommends field-based certification requirements and mandated data exchange features.

PatientBond Acquires c2b Horizons, Forming First Patient Engagement Technology Company with Embedded Consumer Psychographic Profiling

PatientBond, a patient engagement solutions vendor, has acquired c2b Horizons which makes embedded consumer profiling tools. Financial details were not disclosed.