In 2014, 56 percent of eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals were eligible for meaningful use stage 2.
Of those eligible for stage 2, 77 percent attested to meaningful use stage 2 by November 2014, one month before the attestation deadline, according to CMS data presented at the HIT Policy Committee meeting Jan. 13.
Eligible hospitals were those that had completed two years of stage 1 attestation.
These numbers look more encouraging than previous reports indicating only 4 percent of providers attested to stage 2 because this time CMS reviewed attestation numbers for just eligible providers who were expected to meet stage 2 instead of reviewing the numbers for all eligible providers, according to iHealthBeat citing Politico Pro.
Paul Tang, MD, co-chair of the committee, said in the meeting that this distinction was his "biggest ah-ha" moment, according to Health Data Management. "In the past, we've sort of focused on who is attesting and we've been looking at really small numbers. Actually only about half of hospitals are even eligible to attest for stage 2. [The] encouraging part is that almost 80 percent of those who are eligible did attest."
Additionally, 42 percent of eligible professionals were eligible to attest to meaningful use stage 2. Of those EPs, 60 percent attested through November 2014. Eligible professionals have through February 2015 to attest.
Dawn Heisey-Grove, public health analyst at ONC, said in the meeting eligible professional attestation numbers are smaller because they still have more than a month to attest, and the data presented only went through November 2014, according to Health Data Management.
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