Doctors, Hospitals, Medical Groups Demand EHR Rule Delay
Electronic Health Records (EHRs) continue to take on water:
Calls for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to refrain from finalizing Meaningful Use Stage 3 are increasing, with the American Medical Association and the Medical Group Management Association adding their voices to the din.
Both organizations cite concerns over the proposed rule as it currently stands, with AMA saying in a letter to CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt and National Coordinator for Health IT Karen DeSalvo that the program “will create significant challenges for physicians, patients, and vendors.”
MGMA adds in its own letter to Slavitt that Stage 3 could result in a failure to meet the goals outlined in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. It should be delayed, MGMA says, until it is known what the impact of Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 will be. (Katie Dvorak, FierceEMR, June 3, 2015).
I discussed the stage 3 rule when it was published. The response of these professional groups is stunning: They were all happy to take the almost $30 billion the government handed out to induce them to install Electronic Health Records.
And they led Congress by the nose just a few weeks go to pass the flawed Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act. At the time, none of them mentioned it was going to increase the burden of EHR compliance. The first organization to explain this consequence was the NCPA, in report I wrote before the law passed. These groups are asking the government for relief from a flawed so-called Medicare “doc fix” for which they themselves had spent years lobbying.
It seems the so-called physician advocacy groups have no idea what they are doing. Either they are secretly in cahoots with the government to throw physicians under the bus, or they are totally ignorant.
Whenever I negotiate with a healthcare provider for treatment paid for by cash with a cash discount, I also require that my record be kept 100% private and not passed on to third parties regardless of the reason.
I only wonder how the EHR requirements will affect our negotiations.
Let us know how that works out.
It scares me- a Texas hospital CFO faces 5 years in jail for mid reporting the meaningful use data for his now dedunct hospital :
“According to the original indictment, White, who oversaw the hospital’s EHR implementation, falsely attested to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that Shelby Regional Medical Center met meaningful use requirements for the 2012 fiscal year, ultimately receiving $785,655 in payments.”
It’s another layer of beaauraucratic administrative costs that healthcare entities must a absorb while seeing reimbursement decline. And if you fudge the numbers, you could face 5 years in jail. Welcome to the new America.