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. Check out Lynn’s previous Meaningful Use Monday posts.
CMS recently added a “Data and Reports” section on its website for the EHR Incentive Program, and some interesting information can be found there about meaningful use Stage 1:
- Do you want to know whether your competitor(s), or possibly your own personal physician(s), received an EHR incentive for meaningful use? Recipients are listed, alphabetically by state—complete with address and phone number—in a report called Medicare Providers That Have Been Paid Via the EHR Program For Eligible Providers.
- As of April, 156,172 EPs have registered for the Medicare EHR Incentives program. Clearly, there’s a big difference between registering and attesting, however. Of these providers, 56,214 (36%) have successfully attested and received incentive payments. Not surprisingly, 43% of these providers are primary care physicians. More detailed data about program participation is available as well.
- There are also some raw data files that show how providers performed on each of the individual meaningful use measures. This data—which reveals that EPs often significantly surpassed the required thresholds—is being used as justification for the proposed increases to thresholds for Stage 2. A note of caution: this data comes only from providers who successfully attested, and these first attesters were likely early adopters and therefore experienced users of EHR technology.
CMS updates this data on a regular basis, so if you are interested in the progress of Stage 1 as we wait for the Final Rule on Stage 2, check back to this page periodically.