Dive Brief:
- The Electronic Fairness Act of 2015 (H.R. 877), sponsored by Rep. Diane Black (R-TN) is expected to reach a vote this Wednesday. An identical bill, with the same title, has already been introduced to the Senate by Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA).
- If approved, physicians who work in ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) could become eligible to participate in the federal EHR incentive payment program, from which they were originally excluded.
- Since ASCs were not part of the EHR incentive program, many EHRs used in ASCs haven't been tested or certified for use in the program. Current rules require physicians who use ASCs for surgery to count patient visits in the denominator of total patient visits on which the 50% fraction requirement for meaningful use is based.
Dive Insight:
The pending legislation states, "Physicians with patient encounters in an ambulatory surgical center are at a disadvantage when attempting to meet meaningful use requirements."
The bill "amends title XVIII (Medicare) of the Social Security Act to prohibit for a payment year after 2015 any patient encounter of an eligible professional (EP) occurring at an ASC from being treated as such a patient encounter in determining whether an EP qualifies as a meaningful EHR user." The bill also states it terminates this prohibition three years after HHS determines certified EHR technology is applicable to the ASC setting.
Robert Tennant, health IT policy director for the Medical Group Management Association, told Modern Healthcare, "This is a simple bill, but it solves a pesky problem for some percentage of EPs, mostly surgical folks, that practice medicine part of the time in ASCs."