Medisoft Clinical and the 21st Century Cures Act

The 21st Century Cures Act, signed December 13, 2016, by President Obama, promotes and funds the acceleration of research into preventing and curing serious illnesses; accelerates drug and medical device development; attempts to address the opioid abuse crisis; and tries to improve mental health service delivery. The Act includes a number of provisions that push for greater interoperability, the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs), and support for human services programs.

This bipartisan bill was passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Democratic President. The law has been called the “most important bill of the year“ by Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).

While the bill is largely known to help fund efforts such as precision medicine, it contains some provisions to improve healthcare IT—most notably, in relation to nationwide interoperability and information blocking. Certain sections are focused on "improving quality of care for patients," with interoperability the main concern. It also places a strong emphasis on providing patients access to their electronic health information that is "easy to understand, secure and updated automatically."

The Final Rule calls for the industry to support Application Programming Interface (API) functionality.  It requires that Health IT certified through the ONC Health IT Certification Program have standardized APIs.

In a letter dated May 24, 2022, CompuGroup Medical, (the company that now owns Medisoft and Medisoft Clinical) stated: "Investments in Practice Partner and you, our valued resellers, have historically been and continue to be a key part of our business.  We know many customers have been part of the Practice Partner/Medisoft Clinical/Lytec MD (“Practice Partner”) family for decades.  Over that time the landscape of the EHR market and regulatory requirements have changed dramatically.  We have made considerable investments into Practice Partner to keep it compliant with regulations in the last 6 years.     

We are now moving into the next phase of regulations.  Additional 21st Century Cures Act requirements for EHRs come into effect on January 1st, 2023. These have very significant additional requirements so as a result, CompuGroup Medical has decided it will not pursue Cures Act updates to Practice Partner’s ONC certification moving forward.  Practice Partner will no longer be considered an ONC 2015 Edition Certified EHR after 12/31/2022.  This affects customers’ ability to meet the 2023 MIPS Promoting Interoperability and Clinical Quality Measures (“CQMs”) reporting requirements". 

We know that with change there will be challenges.  Contact us sooner rather than later to ensure you give your practice enough time for a sucessful implementation.  Our number one goal is to minimize disruption to your practice and your patients!.

If you plan to comply with the MIPS Promoting Interoperability standards we have other options available to aid you in choosing what's best for your practice.