Last week, CMS announced plans to modify legislation requirements that would reduce the meaningful use reporting period from one year to 90 days, responding to recommendations from numerous professional organizations.
CMS' announcement was met mostly with praise from the overall healthcare industry. Here are five comments and statements on the proposed meaningful use reporting period changes.
Steven J. Stack, MD, president-elect of the American Medical Association: EHRs are intended to help physicians improve care for their patients, but unfortunately, today's EHR certification standards and the stringent requirements of the meaningful use program do not support that goal and decrease efficiency. We hope the new rule will be issued expediently to provide the flexibility needed to allow more physicians to successfully participate in the meaningful use program and better align meaningful use with other quality reporting programs such as the Physician Quality Reporting System and the Value-Based Modifier. Additionally, we hope ONC will address problems with interoperability and support technologies that provide the ability for information to be exchanged, incorporated and presented to a physician in a contextual and meaningful manner.
Donald Fisher, PhD, president and CEO of American Medical Group Association: AMGA is very pleased with CMS' announcement that it intends to make these critical changes to the EHR incentive program. We have long advocated for this change in both comments to CMS, support for a legislative proposal that would have made this modification if CMS had not taken action, and in discussions with members of Congress. These changes will be enormously helpful to our members who have pioneered the use of electronic health records. AMGA has been active with both CMS and the Congress in advocating for these changes, and we look forward to continued work with policymakers to ensure these changes are implemented this year.
Russell Branzell, president and CEO of CHIME: Our members have been steadfast advocates for the value of a 90-day reporting period to foster interoperability and improve care coordination through broad program participation and EHR optimization. We are pleased that CMS has announced their intent to make a number of changes to the program – in addition to a shortened reporting period — to reduce complexity and lessen providers’ reporting burden. Meaningful use has the potential be a transformative program for the nation’s healthcare delivery system and we commend CMS for recognizing the need for a course-correction.
Russell Branzell, president and CEO of CHIME (in a separate statement): It truly is an answer for what we have been asking for quite some time, actually all the way back to late 2013 and early 2014…. This is going to be extremely well received across the entire industry because at this point I'm not sure of many people, if any, who will see this as anything other than a positive move for the industry.
John Halamka, MD, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Boston): It's a positive sign that HHS leaders are listening and responding to stakeholders. Meaningful use stage 2 contains numerous goals that require an ecosystem/marketplace to develop first...The new timeline gives us the flexibility we need to do these projects right.
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