ARRA News

CMS issues first Medicare EHR incentive payments, proposed e-Rx rule

The Medicare electronic health record incentive program recently issued its first round of payments, totaling $75 million, to providers who signed up in the first two weeks that payments were available, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced May 26. The list of several hundred recipients represents a relatively slow start to the program, given that CMS estimates more than 42,600 eligible professionals and hospitals have registered for the Medicare and Medicaid incentive programs to date, and 485,000 are potentially eligible to participate.

Beginning April 18, hospitals and physicians eligible to participate in the Medicare EHR incentive program could, if they choose, begin attesting that they meet the program's meaningful use requirements. Hospitals wishing to attest in FY 2011 must report on the meaningful use measures for a 90-day period during the federal fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

However, hospitals need not attest to meaningful use in FY 2011 to benefit fully from Medicare EHR incentive payments. Medicaid EHR incentive programs are being implemented on a state-by-state basis.

According to CMS, 15 states have initiated their Medicaid EHR incentive programs since January, issuing about $83 million in incentive payments to qualified Medicaid providers to date.

Also on May 26, CMS issued a proposed rule for Medicare’s electronic prescribing incentive program. The rule would allow physicians and other eligible providers who meet meaningful use requirements to apply for a waiver from the 1.0% e-prescribing penalty that will take effect Jan 1, 2012.

House members urging colleagues to cosponsor EHR multi-campus bill

Reps. Michael Burgess (R-TX), Eliot Engel (D-NY), Kevin Brady (R-TX) and Charles Rangel (D-NY) plan to introduce legislation clarifying that electronic health record incentive payments under Medicare and Medicaid should go to each campus of a multi-campus hospital system, and in a letter May 26 asked House members to support it. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services final rule for meaningful use of electronic health records required incentive payments to be delivered on the basis of Medicare provider numbers, not physical campuses.

According to the letter, the bill “would give hospitals affected by this regulation an opportunity to recover some of the payments Congress intended they receive.” The American Hospital Association and Association of American Medical Colleges support the measure.

For more on the proposed legislation, contact Erik Rasmussen, AHA senior associate director of federal relations, at erasmussen@aha.org or 202-626-2981.

Digital health system will hinge on interoperability

Achieving the federal goal of a digital health care system will require "seamless interoperability," according to an Institute of Medicine report. The report also identifies IT systems that are more user-friendly and that enable point-of-care delivery of clinical decision support as keys to success.

Read more from Modern Healthcare here.

AHA launches revamped ‘meaningful use’ resource

The American Hospital Association on May 25 unveiled a new and improved web-based resource devoted to helping hospital leaders better understand the Medicare and Medicaid electronic health records incentive programs and their associated “meaningful use” requirements. This streamlined resource is intended to provide members with all of the information they need on the programs in one place and contains links to both AHA and government resources.

“This resource provides members with a one-stop source of information on the EHR programs,” said AHA Director of Policy Chantal Worzala. “We believe they will find it useful as they navigate the programs’ requirements and seek to achieve meaningful use.”

Only 13 RHIOs meet meaningful use criteria

There are 75 operational RHIOs (regional health information organizations) across the U.S. but only 13 of them meet the most basic criteria for meaningful use of health information technology, according to a 2009 study by a group of Harvard University researchers. With grant support from the federal government, RHIOs provide hospitals and physicians with a single connection to swap clinical data with other participating providers such as labs and public health departments.

Read more from HealthLeaders Media here.

Panel considers Stage 2 EHR requirements, timing

The Health IT Policy Committee met May 11 to consider both the timing of and requirements for Stage 2 of "meaningful use" under the Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record incentive programs. Stage 2 is currently planned to start for hospitals on Oct. 1, 2012, which the American Hospital Association and other organizations have been concerned will not give hospitals and physicians sufficient time to implement new functionalities or vendors sufficient time to upgrade their products.

The committee considered three options: maintaining the current timeline, limiting the first year of the Stage 2 reporting period to 90 days, and delaying the start of Stage 2 for one year, as has been recommended by the AHA. In the discussion on timing, Marc Probst, chief information officer at Intermountain Healthcare, provided a cautionary note that hospital CIOs are feeling "undue pressure" from multiple policies that will be implemented in the next couple of years, including meaningful use, ICD-10, and health reform initiatives.

The committee also contemplated a number of proposals that would significantly raise the bar in Stage 2, such as requiring that hospitals implement patient portals with download capacity and that hospitals serving as reference labs electronically send lab results to physician offices in structured formats. The committee will meet June 8 to finalize recommendations.

Larry Wolf, health IT strategist for Kindred Healthcare, recommended that the committee come back to the conversation with "parsimony in mind. How much do we want to expand the scope of requirements versus achieving exchange of the information we have?"

MU panel considers EMR Stage 2 delay

An advisory panel that is shaping measures for the next stage of meaningful use has suggested delaying stage 2 by one year until 2014 as an option to allow vendors and healthcare providers more time to update and roll out more advanced technology. Learn more here.