All Things EMR | Meaningful Use
This Is How: Meaningful Use of an EMR
The federal government just announced that $5.7 billion worth of incentive checks have been paid out to 112,400 hospitals and doctors in the U.S. for the Meaningful Use of electronic medical records.
We have made helping physicians achieve the measures one of our top priorities and we offer the only federal incentive guarantee in the industry. So, we are happy to see all the momentum.
How is it that 85% of our eligible providers have attested to the Stage 1 measures? Simply put, we deliver our Best in KLAS software, networked knowledge and back-office work through the cloud. As a cloud-based service, we have visibility across our network and we can provide seamless updates to keep up with any changes.
Watch this video to learn more:
Just one thing, the video says we have 31,000 providers in our network. Old news. Make that more than 33,000 providers.
Want to see how that network of providers performed? Check out our Meaningful Use dashboard for full results.
Congratulations,
I am one of the lucky doctors who has received a check this year for acheiving meaningful use in 2011.
Doctors who are trying to the right thing, and who suffered through the agonizing process to meet the federal government’s criteria for “meaningful use”(MU) and were paid in 2011 are now subject to CMS audits.
THE OTHER SHOE HAS DROPPED.
Never before mentioned, now CMS announces that 20% of practices who received federal dollars for documenting and meeting all of the MU criteria will be audited this summer. All of my friends who have avoided the MU trap and who refused to participate in this federal government nonsense now have their suspicions confirmed. Now they have the proof that MU has always been a way for CMS to turn “1984″ into current reality.
1. CMS annually will audit 20% of doctors receiving checks. Assuming one meets the future MU stages, over the next 4 years, then your chances are close to 100% of being audited.
2. How many years after you received your first check does a physician remain on the audit list?(forever?). What else will they be able to audit? Billing? Documentation? Doctor-Patient communication?
3. The doctors who have volunteered for MU are not going be he the ones engaging in questionable behavior. On the contrary, they are most likely the early adopters who belive in the medical IT movement and want it to succeed. Moreover, one could argue that those persons who are defrauding the federal government would be savvy enough to NEVER participate in MU for this very reason. Hello, those people, by definition, live UNDER the radar! That’s how they commit fraud, by not getting caught!
Physicians around the country are disgusted with the criminalization of our honorable profession. We are under attack! Our government now assumes that physicians are actively defrauding taxpayers as it spends millions of dollars paying our fellow citizens to root out fraud & abuse.
The vast majority of doctors continue to serve their patients from their foundation of altruism and respect while always bearing the responsiblilty for their patients’ lives and well being.
The federal government is proving they have no respect for our time honored calling and profession. From Pediatricians who IMO have a heart of gold, caring for screaming and helpless babies to Internists dealing with end of life decisions, doctors have a unique place in society and live by a code of honor including the highest standards of ethics and integrity.
DOCTORS NEED TO WAKE UP!
Hi Dr. Tiblier,
Thanks so much for your comment about the MU audit process. While no one welcomes an audit, the current MU attestation process is ripe for fraud and abuse. All someone needs to do for Medicare MU attestation is type some numbers into a website and press “Submit” — there’s no requirement to support all of those numbers with actual data and documentation. We at athenahealth believe that MU attestation should look a lot like PQRS: your EHR vendor should submit patient-level performance data directly to CMS, CMS analyzes the data to see if you’ve met all of the requirements, and THEN the check is cut. Until that happens, the check goes out first and the proof happens later.
That said, if the auditors come knocking, you’ve got the entire MU War Room ready to support you every step of the way. The threat of an audit should not stop physicians from using EHRs and taking advantage of incentive programs like MU. Those fee schedule adjustments in 2015 for non-MUers will add up!