Dive Brief:
- As of November 1, only 43,898 eligible professionals and 1,903 eligible hospitals have attested to Meaningful Use for the 2014 reporting period, out of 500,000 active registrants, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Of those, only 1,478 eligible professionals and 840 eligible hospitals have attested for Stage 2.
- Elisabeth Myers from the CMS Office of Standards and Services told the Health IT Policy Committee that it would be difficult to judge which stage providers are attesting to until the end of the attestation period because the agency can't predict which providers will take advantage of the new flexibility rule easing the Stage 2 standards. The attestation period for hospitals ends on November 30.
- The figures are up from July, when only 972 professionals and 10 hospitals had attested to Stage 2. And as Dawn Heisey-Grove from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT remarked, many providers are waiting until the "last minute" to attest, so those numbers are likely to increase as the month goes on.
Dive Insight:
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, with the American Medical Association, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society and the Medical Group Management Association, called the numbers "disappointing, yet predictable." The organizations continued to call for an abbreviated reporting period in 2015—not a surprise given that 87% of professionals attesting to Stage 2 took advantage of the exclusion for summary of care provided or sent electronically, suggesting an ongoing provider unreadiness.
Said HIMSS Executive Vice President Carla Smith, "If CMS continues to require a full-year of Meaningful Use reporting for 2015, we anticipate that large segments of providers will no longer be able to participate in the program, which hinders our nation's ability to improve the quality, safety, cost-effectiveness, and access to care."
The program has paid out more than $25 billion in incentive payments through September 30.