Reasons Doctors Won't Attest To MU Stage 2 Are Opportunities To Provide Solutions
By Megan Williams, contributing writer
A survey of the social network for doctors, SERMO, has revealed that 55 percent of physicians don’t plan to attest for Stage 2 Meaningful Use in 2015, according to HealthData Management. As of last week, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) reported only 15 percent had attested.
Struggles
According to the SERMO survey, doctors named three primary reasons for not meeting attestation standards:
- patient engagement
- lack of workflow usability
- excessive time consumptions
There are other problems that professionals seeking attestation face. They include slow vendor speed in obtaining EHR certification, a lack of infrastructure for meeting Stage 2 interoperability requirements, and providers still having difficulties getting patients to download and view their EHRs.
New Allies
The American Medical Association (AMA) has weighed in , encouraging CMS to move to add more flexibility to the MU program and shorten the reporting period to help keep physicians from being penalized. Also, Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) introduced the Flexibility in Health IT Reporting (Flex-IT) Act of 2015 to address those exact reporting issues, according to Medscape.
Last week, CMS responded, shortening the reporting period, based on Flex-IT Act recommendations. This along with changes to several other aspects of the program will go into effect this spring.
Ellmers states in an article in The Ripon Advance, “I commend CMS on (its) announcement today and am pleased to see (it) implement the 90-day reporting period as was suggested in the Flex-IT Act. I’ve heard the pleas from physicians, hospitals, and health care providers in North Carolina, and I am relieved to see CMS addressing the need for a 90-day reporting period in 2015. The additional time and flexibility afforded by these modifications will help hundreds of thousands of providers meet Stage 2 requirements in an effective and safe manner.”