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.

A reader posed the following question: What happens if a physician receives a Medicaid EHR incentive in 2011, no longer meets the 30% eligibility threshold for Medicaid in 2012 and therefore elects not to apply for any incentive that year, and then has to switch to the Medicare program in 2013 because his Medicaid volume is still too low to qualify under Medicaid? Below is a follow-up to a prior post, (“Switching Between Medicare and Medicaid Incentive Programs”), that provides the additional information needed to not only answer this particular question, but also to evaluate the financial impact of other scenarios in which a provider might skip years and/or switch between programs. 

Here are the rules regarding switching programs and skipping years:

• An EP can switch between programs only once after receiving his first incentive payment, and the switch must occur in 2014 or earlier.
• When an EP switches programs, he is “placed in the payment year he would have been in had he begun in—and remained in—the program to which he has switched.”
• Medicare and Medicaid treat skipping years differently. Medicare incentives require that payment years be consecutive—so while an EP can skip a year, if he does, he forfeits that year’s incentive permanently. Medicaid incentive payments, on the other hand, can be non-consecutive with no adverse impact on total available revenue.
• The last year that payments will be available also differs between the two programs. Under Medicare, no payments will be made after 2016, whereas EPs have until 2021 to earn incentives under Medicaid.
• Although an EP who switches to or from the Medicare program could—under certain circumstances—earn more than the total Medicare incentives ($44,000), in no cases would any EP be paid more than the maximum available under Medicaid ($63,750). 

To get back to the physician in the reader’s question, when he switches to the Medicare program after skipping 2012, 2013 would be considered (and paid as) his third payment year. 

Confused? To analyze the financial implications of switching programs and/or skipping a year under scenarios that might apply to your practice, make a chart and do the math—taking into account the above rules and the schedules of annual incentives.

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.

Meaningful Use penalties—or to use the politically correct word, “adjustments”—are scheduled to begin in 2015 for providers who are not meaningful users of certified EHR technology by 2014. There’s something about the prospect of incurring a revenue reduction that seems to evoke a visceral response among providers—even among those who do not find the potential incentive money motivating.

Here’s what you need to know about the penalties:

1) Penalties apply to Medicare only.
- Adjustments will be applied as a percent of Medicare Part B Professional Fee Schedule Charges.
- They are scheduled to begin in 2015, and continue as follows:
2015: 1%
2016: 2%
2017: 3%
2018 and 2019: may increase 1%/year, at the discretion of the Secretary of HHS.

2) There has been speculation by some industry pundits that the penalties will be delayed or not implemented at all, but to rely upon that as a given would be a mistake.

3) There are no penalties associated with the Medicaid program—adjustments do not apply to Medicaid revenue. Pursuing the EHR incentives as a Medicaid provider, however, does not totally insulate a physician from the penalties. If a Medicaid provider does not become a meaningful user by 2014, the revenue he/she generates under Medicare would be subject to the adjustments above.

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.

EPs cannot receive EHR incentives from both Medicare and Medicaid in the same year—they must choose between the two, even if they are eligible under both programs. As discussed in a prior Meaningful Use Monday post, Medicaid is typically the EHR incentive program of choice for EPs who have a sufficiently large Medicaid volume. 

But providers must re-qualify annually, so what happens if the participating provider’s Medicaid volume drops below the 30% (or 20% peds.) threshold in a future year, making him/her no longer eligible for that program? What about an EP who initially participates as a Medicare provider, but subsequently becomes eligible for the more generous Medicaid program? As the first EHR Incentive Program participants approach year 2, they need to understand their options in this regard. 

The rule is as follows:  An EP may switch from one program to another, but only one time after receiving his/her first EHR incentive payment, and only for a payment year before 2015.  

Note: In case you are doing the math and calculating how you could game the system to increase your potential revenue, the rule goes on to say that under no circumstances can an EP’s total incentives exceed the total available under Medicaid, (i.e., $63,750).

The following was a comment made on my previous post about Meaningful Use attestation issues by Jon (man there are a lot of John/Jon’s in Health IT). As always, I do my best to bring out interesting topics for all to read. In this rant, Jon makes some interesting comments about the challenge of specialty EHR software to meet the MU measures. Something I’ve mentioned before, but Jon adds some more insight.

*start rant*

It is even worse for some small EHR vendors that have existed for over 20 years – like the one I work for. The government has no idea how ugly and not applicable many key elements of meaningful use (defined as the government chooses) are for non-primary care, highly specialized providers.

Here’s a conundrum that frames EHR certification and meaningful use in a way I rarely see it discussed (and would love for someone to explore more *hint hint*) – take a small, but established vendor of EHR software which is not yet certified.

This vendor provides software to a niche industry of highly specialized providers, who do not derive any real or identifiable value from meaningful use as it is defined (to keep things generic I will omit the specific part of the industry).

To get software 100% EHR certified you must fulfill all of the requirements, even if, as a vendor, your customers will not make use of, or benefit from, most of the functionality. Please take as an assumption (for this discussion) that only 30-40% of the EHR certification requirements are of value to the customer.

Since the customer will not make use of the functionality, they don’t want really want to pay for a 100% EHR certified product. But they sure would like the incentive money (or in the case of Medicare providers, will get penalized if they didn’t do meaningful use).

As a small vendor, your big competitors are all EHR certified (and some are even free), but even if it didn’t make sense for the customer – because the other (typically larger) vendor can afford to implement it, even if it is sloppy. Customers see a well-known product name from a large company is EHR certified – so EHR certification gives those who complete it an edge – even if it makes zero financial or functional sense.

I hate being a pessimist, as surely some good has come from meaningful use. However, as we are seeing by these posts, what value does EHR certification and meaningful use TRULY bring to the provider, other than the requisite piece of paper to get incentive money? We need to see many, many more successes, and in my specific case, we need to make sense of how to make something which is not useful… useful somehow.

Sure, the answer to this might be that in the long run, vendors with better or more applicable products will always win out, but we know that this isn’t always true based on long-term software contracts or lack of desire to switch vendors. Or the answer might be that highly specialized providers only account for 20% or less, and 80% of the provider population is primary care or similar handle meaningful use just fine. Or maybe that I’m just crying in my beer!

Nevertheless, we have this catch-22.. or an enigma wrapped in a mystery shrouded in a riddle.

*end rant* Comments? Thoughts?

One other note from John Lynn, I’m sure many large EHR vendors will probably say that if small EHR vendors can’t meet the MU requirements, then they don’t deserve to be an EHR software. Those that say this, are really missing the point. It’s not that they couldn’t meet the MU requirements, it’s a question of should they meet them in MU’s current state.

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.

A Meaningful Use Monday reader asked whether a provider who practices near the border of two states and treats patients under the two distinct Medicaid programs can participate in both EHR incentive programs. A similar question has been asked by physicians who have practice locations in two neighboring states. The answer is “No”, even if the EP meets or exceeds the 30% patient volume threshold in both states. 

EPs can receive only one incentive each year, and they must choose the state from which they wish to receive the payment. They can, however, change states on an annual basis when they re-attest—flexibility which is valuable in the event that their Medicaid volume falls below the required level in the first state and they lose eligibility for that program. 

CMS created a single registration system for both incentive programs to enable the States to check for—and make them responsible for preventing—duplicate payments, whether from two states or from Medicaid and Medicare simultaneously. My next Meaningful Use Monday post will discuss the rules for switching between the Medicaid and Medicare EHR incentive programs.

Yep, the government shutdown talks were in the air again. We heard all about this back in April, we just heard about it again and now they’ve pushed the discussion out until November. I have a feeling that we’re going to continue to hear about it for a while to come. I’m just a passive political sideline observer, but I’d say the chance of a government shutdown is still very little. For all the drama of the media, I have a feeling that the drama won’t actually lead to a shutdown. A last minute deal will be reached…again and again like it did this time and the last.

However, it’s interesting to consider how a government shutdown could affect healthcare IT. In similar situations I’ve seen budgets have usually seen healthcare as an essential function and so they’ve been fine. Although, that’s really talking about the short term possibility of a government shutdown. Who knows what the long term budgets could hold for the government related entities.

Medicare and Medicaid are constantly in the cross hairs of cuts. Most doctors I know talk about how those two government programs pay them the least amount of money. Plus, they talk how many of the cuts to Medicare and Medicaid basically get passed on to them as doctors. I wonder what the super committee that’s required to cut $1.5 trillion of the federal deficit over the next decade will do with Medicare and Medicaid.

We’ve discussed many times the potential impact of the workings in Washington on meaningful use and the EHR incentive money (most think it’s safe).

For those that think what happens in Washington DC won’t really have much impact on healthcare IT, you might want to consider the email I got today announcing the keynote speakers for HIMSS 12 in Las Vegas. Donna Brazile (Democrat) and Dana Perino (Republican) will be on stage for what will no doubt be a spirited debate about the 2012 presidential elections, the political landscape and healthcare reform.

It’s going to be an interesting next couple years to see how changes in government affect healthcare IT and EMR.

Today’s Meaningful Use Monday is going to be short and sweet. I’m busy attending the AHIMA conference seeing their perspectives on EHR and meaningful use. However, I found an interesting resource on the CMS website for those wanting to collect the Medicaid EHR incentive money.

In this resource, CMS lists which states have a Medicaid EHR incentive program which is really important since each state governs the Medicaid part of the EHR incentive money. For posterity’s sake, here’s the list of programs that are open according to that website:
CMS registration opens in the following states on September 5, 2011:
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
Oregon
The following states opened for registration prior to September 5, 2011:
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Connecticut
Indiana
Iowa
Kentucky
Louisiana
Michigan
Mississippi
Missouri
New Mexico
North Carolina
Ohio
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Other states will launch their Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs during the fall of 2011.

They also have a link to a PDF which lists each state’s expected launch date. Some of them won’t launch into well into 2012. It’s pretty amazing to see the differences in each state.

Ever since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act became law in February 2009, giving birth to the phrase “meaningful use,” I’ve wondered when private insurers would follow the federal government’s lead and start offering financial carrots and sticks for using and not using EHRs. After all, one of the purposes of the Medicare and Medicaid incentive program was to address the fact that payers tend to reap the greatest financial gains from hospitals and physicians adopting EHRs, even though most if not all of the cost of acquiring the technology falls on the provider.

Federal officials have made it clear all along that “meaningful use” is just that, the meaningful use of the technology. The government was not simply going to write checks so providers could go out and buy technology. As the country’s largest purchaser of  healthcare services, CMS wanted some value for its money (not exactly something you hear every day when it comes to government spending).

I’d been hearing for years that major commercial health insurers also were willing to share some of the savings from EHR adoption, but not until the largest payer of them all, Medicare, did so first. The private sector usually does follow Medicare’s lead when it comes to major policy shifts. Medicare now has done so, but private payers have been mostly silent. Mostly.

This month, as InformationWeek reports, Humana teamed up with Allscripts Healthcare Solutions to offer physician practices financial incentives for purchasing Allscripts EHR systems. The deal is similar to one Humana cut last year with Athenahealth. A few Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, notably in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, have led similar programs at the state level, with eClinicalWorks the main partner.

But unless I’m forgetting something, Humana is the only big payer that has jumped into the game. Where are the UnitedHealthcares, Aetnas, Cignas and WellPoints of the world?

Payers, it’s time to make good on the lip service you gave years ago and start passing on some of the savings you will realize from Medicare, Medicaid and hundreds of thousands of providers spending billions of dollars on EHR technology and health information exchange efforts.

CMS published a list (pdf) of the first providers who received incentive payments under the Medicare portion of the EHR program. What distinguishes these incentive recipients from those announced in early January—(See “Meaningful Use? Not Yet”)—is that these providers actually had to attest to earning these incentives by demonstrating meaningful use. The earlier recipients received their payments through the Medicaid program, which for the first year’s incentive only requires adoption, implementation, or upgrade of a certified EHR, not meaningful use.

There are 320 providers on this first Medicare list. Here’s how the list breaks down:

• Approximately 40 are hospitals/health care centers.
• As anticipated, the vast majority of the physicians are primary-care providers—over two-thirds if you include cardiologists.
• Surgical specialists are significantly underrepresented—also as expected. (There are only 11 orthopaedists, for example.)
• And for some reason, there are a relatively large number of podiatrists among these first meaningful users.

So, if you are in need of some tips on how to successfully meet the meaningful use requirements and/or navigate the attestation process, you might want to browse through the list (pdf) and see if you recognize any names.

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.

A regular reader of EMR and HIPAA, Wes Kemp, sent me an interesting set of slides/PDF file that gives a meaningful use overview from a Medicaid perspective. I always transgress Medicaid when it comes to meaningful use and the EHR incentive money. Plus, I thought he had an interesting way of displaying the meaningful use overview. Since I hate PDF’s, I did it as an embedded document below. For best viewing, click on the Full Screen button, or you can always download it as well.