Reminder: The deadline for Medicare eligible professionals to attest to meaningful use of certified electronic health record technology for the 2013 program year is just two weeks away. Attestations are due on March 31, 2014 at 11:59 pm EST. Click here for addition information about the EHR incentive program as well as to register or attest to meaningful use.
Electronic Health Records
CMS Provides Detailed Instructions on Deadline Extension for 2013 MU Attestation
On Friday, February 7, 2014, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced an extension until 11:59 pm on March 31, 2014 for Eligible Professionals to submit their 2013 EHR Meaningful Use (MU) attestation. In addition, Eligible Hospitals that had trouble submitting their 2013 MU attestation may be able to retroactively submit their attestation to avoid the 2015 payment adjustment but must contact CMS by March 15, 2014 at 11:59 pm to do so. Note that only the attestation deadline is being moved. The requirement to meet MU by September 30, 2013 for Eligible Hospitals and by December 31, 2013 for Eligible Professionals in order to avoid the 2015 payment adjustment is not affected.
What’s new from our previous post about this? Today, CMS published specific instructions on how to take advantage of the extensions of the 2013 MU attestation deadlines in its MLN Connects, Weekly Provider eNews dated Thursday, February 13, 2014. Scroll to the section titled “New EHR Attestation Deadline for Eligible Professionals: March 31” which provides instructions for both Eligible Professionals and Eligible Hospitals. CMS also updated the Eligible Professional 2013 attestation deadline on its EHR Incentive Programs home page.
OIG Report on CMS’ EHR Audit Practices Concludes The Practices Are Not Very Sophisticated
By Ann Triebsch and Kathie McDonald-McClure
Following our blog post on December 11, 2013 about Part One of a report from the Office of the Inspector General for the United States Department of Health and Human Services (OIG) about fraud safeguards in electronic health records (EHRs), the OIG recently issued Part Two of its report. Dated January 2014, the report is entitled, “CMS and Its Contractors Have Adopted Few Program Integrity Practices to Address Vulnerabilities in EHRs”. That title pretty well sums up the report’s findings about the audits conducted by contractors for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
The OIG’s January 2014 report and the earlier December 2013 report both rely heavily on a 2007 study by RTI International (RTI), which was performed under a contract with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). The RTI Study made recommendations for enhancing data quality and integrity in EHRs. The recommendations were aimed at both strengthening some EHR benefits and providing tools within the EHR for detecting inappropriate documentation practices that are unique to EHRs. The OIG investigated whether those tools have been put into full force. Continue reading
Who Accessed My Health Records? Recommendation for Quality over Quantity in Access Reports
By Kathie McDonald-McClure, Ann F. Triebsch and Margaret Young Levi
The Office of National Coordinator (ONC) Health IT Policy Committee voted in December 2013 to recommend that the United States Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) scale back its 2011 proposed rules requiring covered entities to provide patients with reports showing the name of every staff member who accessed their information in an electronic health record (EHR). As reported by Government Health IT, the committee’s Privacy and Security Tiger Team opposes a requirement that entities covered by the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) give such broad “accounting of disclosure” reports to patients. Continue reading
OIG recommends fraud safeguards in hospital EHR technology
On December 10, 2013, the Office of Inspector General for the United States Department of Health & Human Services (OIG) issued a report finding that hospital implementation of fraud safeguards in electronic health records (EHRs) falls short of the recommended standards. The report carries out one of the OIG’s 2013 Work Plan objectives to study how EHR technology may lead to improper payments by federal healthcare programs. In its Work Plan, the OIG had noted that: “Medicare contractors have noted an increased frequency of medical records with identical documentation across services.”
The OIG’s findings were extracted from the responses to an on-line questionnaire to 864 hospitals that had received Medicare EHR incentive payments as of March 2012. The questionnaire focused on four EHR fraud safeguards: 1) EHR audit functions; 2) EHR user authorization and access; 3) EHR data transfer; and 4) patient involvement via the ability to access and comment within their EHR. The OIG criticized the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONC) for failing to incorporate recommended safeguards into meaningful use criteria and EHR certification standards.
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