Medical image viewing will now be an optional menu measure for achieving Stage 2 of meaningful use, according to one of the "crowd-pleasing" announcements made by government officials yesterday at HIMSS' annual meeting in Las Vegas.

HIMSS reports on its website that at a talk, Farzad Mostashari, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, previewed some of the proposals for Stage 2 ahead of their publication in the Federal Register, likely today.

"We stayed the course," Mostashari said, according to HIMSS.
Stage 2, which begins in 2014, will require providers to report on 17 core measures and three out of five "menu" measures, HIMSS said.

One thrust of the new measures appears to be encouraging the exchange of information between institutions, and between providers and patients. For instance, new measures apparently will require a certain percentage of documents to be swapped between EHR systems created by different vendors, while other measures will require a certain amount of patients to get online access to records after a set number of days.

The next stage will also offer more flexibility and standardization for transporting and reporting data, according to HIMSS' account of the talk.

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