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Deadline Looms for ENTs to Put Electronic Health Records to Meaningful Use

by Richard Quinn •

Timing: EPs have to report at least 90 continuous days of data in calendar year 2013 to avoid penalties for Stage 1 noncompliance. The penalties would be levied in 2015 for 2013 data, because all penalties are on a two-year lag. In the second year of Stage 1 reporting, data must be reported for the whole year. EPs do not have to demonstrate Stage 2 compliance until 2014.

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June 2013

Payments: EPs who began participating last year can accumulate up to $44,000 total by 2015. Incentive payments drop each year and fade away by 2017. EPs cannot earn bonus payments in both the EHR Incentive and Electronic Prescribing Incentive programs.

How to avoid penalties: Meet the requirements. Qualify for an exemption as defined in CMS regulations.

Source: AAO-HNS

Use Your Voice

Subinoy Das, MD, director of The Ohio State University Sinus and Allergy Center in Columbus and chair of the AAO-HNS Medical Informatics Committee, said many small or rural practices have not moved quickly on EHR adoption because of the cost and perceived associated issues. “The problems with EMR implementation are poor interoperability, decreased ability to efficiently find valuable medical information to make medical decisions, poor interpersonal communication and a significant increase in junk documentation specifically for billing purposes,” he added.

But Dr. Das said that despite their problems, EHRs are quickly becoming mandatory, as the government uses them as a repository from which to mine data it will use to push quality measures. The key for otolaryngologists at this point is to lobby for core measures that are more relevant to the specialty, because the current lists of objectives are more broad-based. AAO-HNS continues to lobby CMS, but, Dr. Das said, the more voices they hear, the stronger the message.

“As a specialist, when we spend a lot of the appointment either looking at a computer screen, checking off boxes that are unnecessary or irrelevant to the appointment, or even if we’re asking questions that have very low relevance to the appointment … it disenfranchises you from the care of your patients,” he said. “Your patients notice all of this. It really harms the patient-physician relationship in subtle but very important ways. So, having quality measures that are relevant to the practice of medicine that you perform is very important.”

Meaningful Use: Q&A with the AAO-HNS

ENTtoday asked the AAO-HNS what otolaryngologists need to know about demonstrating meaningful use of a certified EHR system

ENTtoday: Are most otolaryngologists eligible for health information technology incentives and thus subject to the meaningful use requirements?

AAO-HNS: All doctors of medicine or osteopathy are eligible under the program. There are exemptions to the program that doctors can apply for on an annual basis through the CMS website. Additionally, hospital-based eligible professionals are not eligible for incentive payments. An eligible professional is considered hospital-based if 90 percent or more of his or her services are performed in a hospital inpatient (Place of Service code 21) or emergency room (Place of Service code 23) setting.