Dive Brief:
- This week, 100 congressional members sent a letter to Shaun Donovan, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell requesting to “refrain from finalizing Meaningful Use Stage 3 at this time.”
- The letter states the proposed Stage 3 rule, currently under OMB’s review, furthers current “problematic policies” of Stage 2. “We should incentivize technology that enables interoperability and improved health outcomes rather than incentivizing technology that counts how many times a provider performs an activity,” the letter states.
- In addition, the authors believe such a delay will allow time to consider the issues around the Merit-Based Payment System and Alternative Payment Models implementations.
Dive Insight:
The letter cites CMS data that an estimated 257,000 providers are currently subject to payment adjustments in the 2015 program year due to the MU program requirements. “We believe this signals a failure that is indicative of issues outside the hands of healthcare providers,” the letter stated. “We believe the solutions to address the provider community’s concerns are well within the department’s reach and action must be taken now.”
The congressional members asked for a response within 30 days.