Meaningful Use has netted nearly $23 billion for eligible hospitals (EHs) and professionals since the inception of the EHR Incentive Programs, representing participation from just over 90% of hospitals and close to 70% of eligible professionals (EPs). As vendors run up against the 2014 EHR certification criteria and Stage 2 of Meaningful Use starts to make its impact felt, providers will need to stretch all their capabilities to collect the last of the incentive payments and avoid increasingly steep financial penalties in the months and years to come.
The latest figures show that 310,605 EPs and 4,714 EHs have successfully participated in the program so far. While the number of hospitals attesting for the first time has trickled down over the first few months of 2014, EPs are still making the push to meet the quality and technology requirements of meaningful use, despite some remaining underlying displeasure about the necessity of joining in with the mandates.
A recent report funded by the Agency for Healthcare Quality Research (AHRQ) also raised questions about the effectiveness of Meaningful Use, stating that the first two stages do not go nearly far enough towards transforming the healthcare industry’s paper-based past into a data-driven, interoperable network with robust IT infrastructure.
“At present, large-scale interoperability amounts to little more than replacing fax machines with the electronic delivery of page-formatted medical records,” the report said. “Current approaches for structuring EHRs and achieving interoperability have largely failed to open up new opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation that can lead to products and services that enhance health care provider workflow and strengthen the connection between the patient and the health care system, thus impeding progress toward improved health outcomes.”
Other concerns center around the certification process for EHR technology, including pushback against “risky” new voluntary criteria for 2015 and the number of vendor products that have not yet achieved certification for 2014.
“At this half-way point in the first year for Stage 2, we strongly urge ONC to work with CMS to assess the number of Medicare EHR Incentive Program participants to date, the number that have attested to Stage 2 and to swiftly publish guidance that informs hospitals how any relief, including 2014 hardship exceptions from the attestation requirement, will be operationalized,” wrote the American Hospital Association in a letter to the ONC discussing the 2015 criteria. “Publishing such guidance will address an immediate problem and will be more beneficial to providers than consideration of certification criteria applicable in FY 2015.”
