News
WASHINGTON – Members of Congress are moving to push legislation through that would shorten the reporting period for stage 2 meaningful use in 2015 if the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services does not act.
At issue is the requirement that eligible physicians, hospitals, and other providers must attest that they meet stage 2 requirements for the full 365-day period in 2015 (beginning Oct. 1, 2014, for hospitals and Jan 1, 2015, for physicians) or face a 1% reduction in Medicare payments as a penalty for not adopting the stage 2 requirements.
kokouu/iStockphoto.com
Congress may shorten the period of time that physicians, hospitals, and healthcare providers have to comply with stage 2 requirements in 2015.
“Only 9% of hospitals in this country right now are up to the [stage 2] mandate on meaningful use,” Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.) said Sept. 18 at the HIMSS Policy Summit. “There’s only 1% of physician offices in this country that are up to the meaningful use mandate.”
Rep. Ellmers and Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah), have introduced the Flexibility in Health IT Reporting Act (H.R. 5481), which would alter those reporting requirements so eligible providers and hospitals would have to attest that they met stage 2 requirements for a 3-month period for 2015 rather than meeting the current regulations, which call for a full year. This would give doctors and hospitals extra time to ensure electronic health record systems are properly upgraded for the next level of requirements.
“My hope is that CMS is going to hear from so many of you, so many from industry that they will actually end up making the change on their own without us actually having to vote on it,” Rep. Ellmers said. “If we do have to vote on it, it will be when we come back in the lame-duck session. I don’t want to have to wait that long.”
She suggested that hospitals could question whether it is worth it to press for stage 2 attestation or just take the 1% penalty.
“There will already have been $24 billion of hard-earned taxpayer dollars that have been invested in this,” she said. “That is going by the wayside if hospitals are not participating in meaningful use,”
Robert Tennant, senior policy adviser at the Medical Group Management Association, made a similar observation about the physician community. He noted that physicians who are eligible to receive incentive bonuses under the meaningful use program and have been participating since the program began in 2011 have already received $38,000 of the $44,000 maximum bonus.
“To move to stage 2 will only allow you to receive a maximum of $6,000, so the money is somewhat less now and so what we don’t want to do is add further discouragement for [eligible providers] to move to stage 2 of the program,” Mr. Tennant said in an interview.
The American Medical Association voiced its support for the bill in a letter to Rep. Ellmers.
At a separate press conference Sept. 18 as part of National Health IT Week, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), also voiced his support for the bill.