HANYS: CMS Oversteps with HIT "Meaningful Use" Rule
Late last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) revealed its proposed rule defining the “meaningful use” of health information technology (HIT). The definition of meaningful use is important because the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 established Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments for health care providers determined to be meaningful users of HIT. Medicare payment penalties for providers not considered to be meaningful users of HIT will begin in 2015.
HANYS believes CMS has overreached and it is likely that many hospitals would not be able to qualify as meaningful users under the proposed regulations, and would therefore not be eligible for the HIT incentive funding.
CMS has proposed to establish criteria for achieving meaningful use in three stages. The proposed rule describes Stage 1 meaningful use criteria in detail. In addition to meeting 23 functionality requirements, hospitals would be required to prove to CMS that they are using the HIT system to report on a set of clinical quality measures. CMS will define specific meaningful use requirements for Stages 2 and 3 in future rulemaking.
CMS has proposed narrow definitions of eligible providers that would exclude about 30% of physicians from the incentive program because they are hospital-based. In addition, CMS proposes to define a hospital by its Medicare Provider Number, preventing individual campuses of a multi-campus hospital from receiving separate HIT incentive payments.
HANYS and its HIT Strategy Group have advocated and will continue to advocate for flexibility in the definition of meaningful use, so that eligible providers making a good faith effort to adopt and implement HIT can achieve the HIT incentive payments to enable the goal of successful widespread adoption and use of HIT systems. HANYS has and will continue to advocate for a flexible definition of an eligible provider.
An American Hospital Association (AHA) summary of the major provisions of the proposed rule is available on AHA’s Web site (an AHA member login and password is needed to access the summary document). Additional CMS’ summary materials are also available online.
HANYS will provide to members a comprehensive analysis of the proposal. HANYS plans to submit comments to CMS, based on input from members.
In addition to the rule defining meaningful use, a second HIT regulation regarding certification and standards criteria has also been published. Contact: Susan Van Meter
