Next Year: Meaningful Use Penalty to struck 171,000 Clinicians

171,000 physicians, nurse practitioners, and other clinicians will take a 3 percent pay cut next year from Medicare for failing to indicate that they met the requirements of government for meaningful use of an electronic health record (EHR) system in the year of 2015, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has declared. Meaningful Use Penalty will hit 171,000 clinicians next year.

A government liaison for a huge medical association blames Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for setting up clinicians to fail in the controversial EHR incentive program. Although, there is hope that the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump may undo the damage.

The snafu, stated Robert Tennant, director of HIT policy for the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), goes back to the day of October 6, 2015, when CMS released its final Stage 2 rules for acquiring meaningful use that year and ignoring a meaningful use penalty in 2017. The organization said clinicians needed to meet the requirements only during a ninety-day stretch of 2015 year. Although, there were fewer than ninety days left in the year of 2015 by October 6.

Fearful of widespread penalties, Congress approved a bill in the year of December 2015 that permitted CMS to depart from its usual policy of granting meaningful use hardship exemptions on a case-by-case basis and grant 1 for a whole category of physicians who were beset by “extreme and uncontrollable circumstances”.

Several physicians apparently did not take advantage of this escape hatch, provided the multitude confronting a meaningful use penalty next year, MGMA's Robert Tennant claimed.

Inquired if CMS was responsible for several physicians flunking meaningful use in the year of 2015 by releasing its final regulations so late that year, Tennant replied, "Absolutely." CMS didn’t respond to a request for a comment on the matter as of 5 PM CST today.

After Trump takes office next month, MGMA might inquire the US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) to waive the penalty, Tennant stated. "It’ll be a tough sell," he claimed. "My guess is, the Trump administration will have greatest fish to fry in healthcare."

The choice of Trump to head HHS is Rep. Tom Price, MD (R-GA), a fierce critic of government regulation in healthcare. "We might have a more sympathetic ear should Dr Price be confirmed as HHS secretary," Tennant claimed.

One flaw to a waiver of the next year's meaningful use penalty, he pointed out, would be the requirement to reprocess potentially millions of Medicare claims paid for services rendered beginning on the day of January 1 at the reduced rate.

The number of clinicians confronting a meaningful use pay cut in the year of 2017 is down from 209,000 penalized in the year of 2016, and 256,000 in 2015. The previous year for a penalty — and the EHR meaningful use program itself — is 2018. Although, elements of meaningful use will live on in the latest reimbursement system developed by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA).