Doctors will continue to drop out of the federal government’s Electronic Health Records Incentive Programs unless officials ease some program requirements, the American Medical Association warned in a May 8 letter to government officials.
The AMA offered a laundry list of needed changes from abandoning the "all-or-nothing" approach for meeting meaningful use standards to removing requirements that are outside the control of physicians.
Dr. Steven J. Stack
"In any other grading system a 99% is an A+, but it’s a fail in the meaningful use program, which just seems entirely inconsistent with what Congress intended, which was to foster the adoption of these tools," Dr. Steven J. Stack, an emergency physician and immediate past chairman of the AMA’s board of trustees, said in an interview.
In the letter to officials at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), the AMA advocated for ending the "all-or-nothing" approach, which requires physicians to successfully meet all meaningful use requirements to earn incentives. The AMA instead recommended a 75% threshold for qualifying for incentives and a 50% threshold to avoid penalties.
The AMA also urged the government not to measure activities outside of the physician’s control, such as whether a patient views or downloads information from a portal.
While the government has been touting widespread participation in the Electronic Health Records Incentive Programs, the AMA said that physicians are beginning to abandon the program. The AMA said that partial data from 2013 showed that there was already a 20% drop out rate in the meaningful use program. It will only grow if the program continues as is, Dr. Stack said.
But there’s time to make changes both to Stage 2 and Stage 3 of the program, Dr. Stack added.
"We don’t see this as a done deal. We see this as a live program that requires ongoing adjustment and tailoring," he said. "The federal government, in order to advance the policy objective of fostering electronic health record adoption and health information exchange, should have a mid-course correction immediately for Stage 2 to make it more possible to have flexibility and a better opportunity for success for the clinicians and the hospitals."
mschneider@frontlinemedcom.com
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