The Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy has released new 2025 Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience (SAFER) guides. The SAFER guides are a set of self-assessment tools that aim to help healthcare organizations evaluate their EHR safety practices, identify potential risks and mitigate those risks. Each SAFER guide includes a self-assessment checklist, action-based worksheets and recommended practices that are designed to help your organization reduce EHR-related patient safety risk, optimize safe use of EHRs and create a “culture of safety.” Learn more about the updated SAFER guides.

Why is this important? Well, if you’re a MIPS eligible clinician, or group, that reports on the Promoting Interoperability (PI) performance category, you must attest “YES” to having completed an annual self-assessment, using one of the SAFER guides, in order to earn a PI score greater than 0. Reporting “YES” won’t affect the total number of points you earn for the PI category. However, leaving the High Priority Practices SAFER Guide measure attestation blank, or reporting “NO,” will result in a score of 0 for the PI category. This is because a “YES” response is required to satisfy the measure requirement and earn a PI performance category score.

Additionally, it’s important to note the previous versions of the SAFER Guides, published in 2016, remain applicable and can continue to be used by MIPS clinicians and groups. If you have any questions about the SAFER guides, we encourage you to contact the Quality Payment Program (QPP) Service Center by email at QPP@cms.hhs.gov or by phone at 1-866-288-8292 (Monday through Friday 8 a.m. – 8 p.m. ET).