The Health IT Standards Committee has begun exploring some of the functions that electronic health records should be capable of performing in stage 2 of meaningful use, with the use of health information exchange by providers to send patients their information to a personal health record a prominent example. Healthcare providers will have a choice in health information exchange in later stages of meaningful use now that different methods are taking shape. Certification and standards criteria in meaningful use stages 2 and 3 should support various methods of exchange when they are coupled with standards and robust testing, according to committee members at their meeting March 29. John Halamka, committee co-chair, posed the question about whether the committee should consider recommending as a stage 2 objective that a provider be able to perform certain kinds of transaction using one of the methods of exchange.
