Health care providers who have been working on Meaningful Use understand how difficult it can be to navigate the federal regulations established by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. These stipulations often put stressful deadlines on practices, forcing them to meet specific objectives or run the risk of being financially penalized.
However, a recent announcement from CMS showed that the agency is looking to alleviate some of the pressures that clinical professionals face when implementing electronic health records at their facilities.
Providing some relief to doctors
Many physicians have struggled with meeting certain core objectives of Meaningful Use, including the 5-percent patient engagement statute. As a result, there has been hope for some kind of relief for achieving the various steps with existing EHR systems.
According to FierceEMR, CMS officially extended the Meaningful Use attestation deadline for eligible physicians to March 20, just a few days ahead of the original Feb. 28 cutoff. In addition, the EHR reporting option for providers who were participating in Physician Quality Reporting Systems was also pushed back to the same date. The extension will allow providers more time to submit Meaningful Use data to CMS as they practice with certified health technology.
Recent reports showed that physicians were still struggling to attest to Stage 2 Meaningful Use through the end of January. Only 15 percent had successfully completed the major measures, according to officials from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. The American Medical Association commended CMS for the extension, however, it noted that the new deadline indicated the Meaningful Use program was struggling.
"The AMA … is concerned that the program will still face low participation rates without substantial changes to its rigid requirements," Steven Stack, AMA president-elect, said in a statement.
This extension coincides with recent announcements from CMS that the agency would be reassessing the attestation reporting period and potentially shortening it from 365 days to 90 days. These changes could help de-stress health care professionals who are shouldering the burden of stringent regulations with health IT.
Feeling the weight of federal oversight
A recent study conducted by market research firm Peak 10 revealed that 94 percent of respondents, which included health IT professionals and clinicians, felt that Meaningful Use requirements and ICD-10 compliance were negatively impacting decision-making for health IT. The regulatory demands from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have practices stretched thin to accommodate for frequent changes.
The overwhelming consensus was that many health IT professionals lack the skills required to complete the complicated challenges posed by the government. In addition, the Meaningful Use program pulls these experts in so many different directions that each objective may be negatively affected. For example, practices focusing on patient engagement tools might neglect ICD-10 training, or vice versa, and wind up falling behind their constituents.
One of the key discoveries of the Peak 10 study was that Meaningful Use is pushing many care organizations toward cloud services for data storage, with 77 percent of the participants looking to improve the reliability of their IT systems.
Contact Viztek for more information.
Ronny Bachrach
Latest posts by Ronny Bachrach (see all)
- Konica Minolta Debuts First-of-Its-Kind Digital U-Arm System at AHRA - July 27, 2016
- Researchers Detect Signs Of Stroke Risk Using MRI - June 27, 2016
- Imaging Biz: Q&A with David S. Channin MD: How to Make PACS Patient Centered - June 22, 2016
0
0
0
