AMA, CHIME support new bill to extend MU timeframe

Rep. Renee Elmers (R-N.C.) introduced the legislation--Further Flexibility in HIT Reporting and Advancing Interoperability Act (the Flex-IT 2 Act)--that also would permanently shorten the annual attestation period to 90 days, rather than the full year, and institute a “linear scale” next year for compliance, replacing the much derided all-or-nothing nature of the EHR incentive program.

CMS proposed Stage 3 regulations in March, with a final rule due before the end of this year.

Ellmers' proposed delay would block CMS from finalizing Stage 3 rules until the agency finishes Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) rules, as called for in the “Doc Fix” legislation that passed in April. Her bill also allows CMS to proceed with Stage 3 once 75 percent of eligible hospitals and individual providers meet Stage 2 criteria. As of January, just 19 percent of doctors and other individuals and 48 percent of hospitals had done so, according to the figures cited by Ellmers.

This bill “is key to supplying healthcare providers with flexibility and certainty, as they struggle yet again to meet the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) stringent requirements pertaining to Meaningful Use," Ellmers said in a release. "This legislation supplies relief by delaying Stage 3 rulemaking until at least 2017 in order to give providers time to breathe and a reprieve from the unfair penalties." 

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) was quick to express its strong support for the bill.

“While CHIME remains committed to the success of Meaningful Use, and to making sure improved patient care is its lasting legacy, we believe significant changes are needed to address increased dissatisfaction with EHRs and growing provider dissatisfaction with the program,” CHIME CEO Russell Branzell and Board Chair Charles E. Christian said in a joint statement. “The introduction of the Flex-IT 2 Act serves to strengthen accountability and effectiveness of an e-enabled healthcare system and ensure long-term vitality of Meaningful Use.”

The American Medical Association (AMA) also offered its strong support for new legislation. "The Meaningful Use program has spurred 80 percent of physicians to implement EHRs in their practices, but the AMA has long held that the program’s ambitious timetable and prescriptive approach has produced undesired consequences that have directly hindered the ability of EHR technology to perform as an effective clinical tool for patients and physicians," said AMA President Steven J. Stack, MD.

“This important bill addresses many of the fundamental shortcomings in government regulations that have made many EHR systems very difficult to use," Stack said. "We heard loud and clear from physicians at the AMA’s first-ever town hall meeting on EHRs and the Meaningful Use program that the systems they use are cumbersome, poorly designed and unable to ‘talk’ to each other thereby preventing necessary transmission of patient medical information.”