The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has published the Meaningful Use (MU) Stage 2 criteria for eligible professionals. There are a number of changes from Stage 1 to Stage 2. There will now be 17 core objectives for Stage 2, instead of the 15 that were in Stage 1. The menu set objectives for Stage 2 are now reduced to six (instead of ten), and eligible professionals must select three (instead of five). Some of the other changes are described below:

Core Objectives
Implementing drug-drug and drug-allergy interaction checks are no longer a separate objective in Stage 2. This measure is incorporated into the Stage 2 Clinical Decision Support measure.

Maintaining an active medication list, maintaining active medication allergy lists, and maintaining an up-to-date problem list of current and active diagnoses are no longer separate objectives in Stage 2 either. These measures are incorporated into the stage 2 measure of Summary of Care Document at Transitions of Care and Referrals.

Reporting clinical quality measures (CQM) is no longer a separate objective for Stage 2, however providers must still submit CQMs to CMS or the States in order to achieve MU. In fact, beginning in 2014, all CQMs will need to be submitted electronically to CMS.

Capability to exchange key clinical information among providers of care and patient authorized entities electronically has been completely eliminated from Stage 2 and is actually eliminated from Stage 1 in 2013 as well.

Implementing drug-formulary checks is no longer a separate objective for Stage 2. Instead, it is included in the ePrescribing measure for Stage 2.

Providing patients with timely electronic access to their health information has been eliminated from Stage 2 and will also no longer be an objective from Stage 1 in 2014.

There is also a new core objective for stage 2 which requires eligible professionals to use secure electronic messaging to communicate with patients on relevant health information for more than 5% of unique patients seen during the EHR reporting period.

Menu Objectives
There are five new menu objectives which are:

Recording electronic notes in patient records for more than 30% of unique patients.

Imaging results consisting of the image itself and any explanation or other accompanying information are to be made accessible through certified EHRs.

Recording patient family health history as structured data for more than 20% of unique patients seen during the EHR reporting period.

Successful ongoing submission of cancer case information and another specific case from certified EHRs to registries for the entire EHR reporting period.

Now this is just a high level synopsis of the Stage 2 changes. For more details and to get the most recent updates, please visit the CMS Stage 2 Website. You can also download a comparison table for Stage 1 and Stage 2 for eligible professionals or a quick tip sheet on changes to Stage 1.