HHS has made it official—Stage 2 of meaningful use will be pushed back to 2014. The announcement by HHS Secretary Sebelius came as no surprise, following as it did the recommendation made by the HIT Policy Committee and the endorsement by ONC head Farzad Mostashari. The change only affects providers whose first incentive payment year is 2011, since they are the only providers who would be subject to Stage 2 regulations in 2013 had the delay not been implemented—everyone was already entitled to 2 years of meaningful use at Stage 1.
What I find interesting about all the hoopla that has accompanied the announcement is the spin the government put on the decision. According to the press release from HHS, “To encourage faster adoption, the Secretary announced that HHS intends to allow doctors and hospitals to adopt health IT this year, without meeting the new standards until 2014. Doctors who act quickly can also qualify for incentive payments in 2011 as well as 2012.”
Isn’t it a bit late for a provider to decide to adopt health IT this year? In reality, this announcement is too last-minute to change any adoption-related behavior or to accelerate EHR adoption. The announcement continued, “Perhaps most importantly, we want to provide an added incentive for providers attesting to meaningful use in 2011.” Apparently, the goal is to accelerate attestation rather than adoption—to encourage physicians who were already using certified EHR technology in a “meaningful way” to attest and to collect an incentive payment this year, instead of holding off attesting until 2012. This would create a potential PR benefit for the incentive program, which currently boasts nearly 115,000 registered providers, but reports that only 10,155 (9%), have successfully attested.
The benefit of the schedule delay accrues only to the early adopters, who now can earn 3 years of incentives under the less stringent requirements of Stage 1 (only, however, if they are willing to forego their 2011 Medicare ePrescribing bonuses—not a worthwhile trade-off for high-revenue physicians with large Medicare volumes). In its statement, HHS acknowledged the pushback from providers regarding how challenging even the Stage 1 requirements are. Perhaps, it would truly spur program participation and EHR adoption if all providers—not just the early adopters—were entitled to 3 years of meaningful use under Stage 1 rules. Also, if CMS has so little confidence that physicians will succeed at Stage 2, shouldn’t it reconsider how much it plans to raise the bar?
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Great perspective, I was a bit surprised at the timing of this annoucement as well and it certainly adds to the confusion around meaningful use; check out my thoughts on this here: http://www.imprivata.com/meaningful_use_blog
Maybe no one has posed your final question along with your arguments to CMS. You should contact them for kicks and see if they respond!
Of the 115000 “registered providers,” do you know how many are actually physicians? Where can one get these figures as they are updated?
Al
[Evan Steele says:]
Al,
The government does not report the names of providers who register, only those who successfully attest. The list of Medicare EHR Incentive recipients is on the CMS website: https://www.cms.gov/EHRIncentivePrograms/Downloads/List_of_providers_paid.pdf
Evan
I believe the main reason for the delay was to allow the EHR vendors more time to get their products ready for Stage 2. Stage 2 final rules aren’t due until July 2012, and then all providers who have attested for 2011 would be required to attest a full year for Stage 2 for 2013 – this would give the EHR vendors only six months to have their software ready, and CMS, being pushed hard by the all the certified EHR vendors realized it wasn’t feasible.