Organizations bite back on MU reimbursement penalties

The latest--and low--numbers of successful Meaningful Use (MU) Stage 2 attestations, and therefore the number of providers now facing reimbursement penalties, have set up a firestorm of criticism from various professional associations.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced last week that about 257,000 Medicare eligible professionals (EPs) will be hit with penalties for failing to meet MU requirements. Oct. 1 was the date by which EPs had to demonstrate MU to avoid the penalty. The agency said those affected soon would receive letters about the penalty.

The American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Hospital Association (AHA) issued scathing criticism in response to the news.

"The American Medical Association is appalled by the news from [CMS] ... the Meaningful Use program was intended to increase physician use of technology to help improve care and efficiency," AMA President-Elect Steven Stack, MD, said in a statement. "Unfortunately, the strict set of one-size-fits-all requirements is failing physicians and their patients."

"These widespread physician penalties reflect the many challenges providers face with the Meaningful Use program," Chantal Worzala, MD, PhD, AHA's director of policy, said in a statement. "Hospitals cannot be successful without their physician partners. It is time for CMS to address providers' concerns about the program."

The penalty is the result of failure to meet MU Stage 2 but CMS announced the low attestation numbers last month. As of Nov. 1, 43,898 eligible professionals and 1,903 eligible hospitals attested for the 2014 reporting period, although the program has more than 500,000 active registrants.