CMS Registration Portal: Efficiencies Coming – Meaningful Use Monday

Registration and attestation are detailed processes which will demand a significant amount of physicians’ time. During a CMS/ONC session at HIMSS, an audience member asked whether each of her organization’s 800 physicians had to personally go onto the CMS portal and register individually. In response to the answer “yes”, she suggested that CMS should at least allow physicians to assign a “proxy” to an administrative staff member to complete the registration process on their behalf.

I am happy to report that such a process is in the planning stages for both registration and attestation, (at least for participants in the Medicare program), according to a recently posted FAQ on the CMS website—but physicians will have to wait until at least May to take advantage of it. Physicians must still register and attest individually, (as opposed to by group), but they will be able to designate a third party to handle these administrative tasks for them. Until this system is in place, however, each eligible professional will have to register for himself or herself. So, unless a physician is planning to attest to meaningful use early this year, it might pay to wait a few months to register.

Lynn Scheps is Vice President, Government Affairs at EMR vendor SRSsoft. In this role, Lynn has been a Voice of Physicians and SRSsoft users in Washington during the formulation of the meaningful use criteria. Lynn is currently working to assist SRSsoft users interested in showing meaningful use and receiving the EHR incentive money. Check out the previous Meaningful Use Monday posts.

About the author

Lynn Scheps

Lynn Scheps is Vice President, Government Affairs at EHR vendor SRSsoft. In this role, Lynn has been a Voice of Physicians and SRSsoft users in Washington during the formulation of the meaningful use criteria. Lynn is currently working to assist SRSsoft users interested in showing meaningful use and receiving the EHR incentive money.

2 Comments

  • Government red tape…can’t make getting money too easy.

    I like that quote from the CMS: “… currently EPs are not permitted to allow a practice manager or any other person to register in their place.”

    The only people I’ve even talked to about how big a pain this process is are the…practice managers.

    Shh.

  • As a person who is going through this @#$% myself and applying as myself, I can honestly say it’s not that hard. But I still can’t even register/attest because CMS won’t let you move to the next screen in their irritating system until April. It’s ridiculous. How can you report for 2011, when it appears you won’t even be able to complete their registration process until lat in the year. So glad I’ve decided to move out of Medicare now.

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