The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released five interactive Health IT guides. These guides target Physician and Hospital provider types, Continuing Care providers, Long Term Care, Assisted Living and Independent Living, including those that offer Nurse Practitioner services. Home Health/Hospice agencies and on-site physician care will also find practical application to their product lines; they can benefit by working with their various providers to help ensure that health information technology (HIT) in place helps them meet the government requirements.

The five interactive health guides were developed to assist eligible providers (EP) and eligible hospitals with the physician quality reporting program (PQRS), electronic prescribing, the EHR Incentive Program and ICD-10 as part of its eHealth initiative. The goal of the CMS eHealth initiative is to assist the health care industry in delivering higher quality care while reducing costs by aligning health information technology with electronic standards programs.

The five new resources will help determine eligibility for the various incentives based health IT programs and the timelines for implementation deadlines. The guides available are the eHealth Interactive Eligibility Guide, the eHealth Interactive Payment Adjustment Guide, the eHealth Interactive Timeline Guide, the EHR Incentive Programs Stage 2 Guide for Eligible Professionals and the Online ICD-10 Guide, all interactive tools to utilize in preparing timelines for participation and determining effects on revenue. For more information, visit http://www.cms.gov/ehealth