Inpatient Facility Coding & Compliance Alert

Acquire the 2014 edition CEHRT to participate. 

Don’t have the 2014 edition certified EHR technology (CEHRT)? You don’t have much time to catch up. With the new program year 2015 for the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs that began on Oct. 1, 2014 for eligible hospitals, CMS has kept CEHRT as a prerequisite to participation in 2015. Read on for more.

Background: Medicare and Medicaid provide financial incentives to eligible hospitals that are able to demonstrate successful use of the EHR technology to impact their patient care initiatives.

• In doing so, the providers must be able to meet the requisite threshold for a number of objectives. 
• The incentive programs have a three-stage roll out with increasing requirements as you proceed through the stages. 
• The eligible hospitals participate according to the federal fiscal year, as opposed to the individual eligible professionals who participate according to the calendar year.
• The hospitals should participate in this program every year to receive an incentive, and avoid a payment adjustment that may befall for non compliance 2015 onwards.

The healthcare information and management systems society (HIMSS) wrote a letter to the HHS stating, 

“HHS’s decision to require a full-year of reporting using 2014 Edition CEHRT in 2015 puts many eligible hospitals (EHs) at risk of not meeting MU for 2015, ” according to a Sept. 12 2014 article on www.ehrintelligence.com

 HIMSS also submits a solution,” For providers not in their first year, CMS should allow such providers to meet MU requirements for any one quarter in 2015 rather than full year,” thereby “allowing providers more time to implement a new 2014 solution, as well as to continue to prepare for a successful transition to Stage 2.” 

Good news: CMS provides flexibility in submission of certain public health objectives such as immunization registries data, electronic reportable lab results etc. The hospital has 60 days from the start of the reporting period for submitting a test demonstration when submitting data for the first time. For threshold objectives, if the hospital meets the threshold during the reporting period that would suffice.

Resource: For further information related to the EHR program, visit: 

https://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Legislation/EHRIncentivePrograms/Downloads/All_Hospital_Core-MenuSetMeasures.zip

Editor’s Note: In the next issue, read about how to calculate your incentives and how to demonstrate meaningful use, incorporating the objectives outlined for hospitals.