the American Hospital Association, the National Rural Health Association, the College of Healthcare Information Man- agement Executives, the Medical Group Management Association, the American College of Physicians, and the Tennessee Medical Association support the request. At press time, the federal government hadn’t granted a delay. If you haven’t become a meaning-
ful user by 2015, you’ll be subject to a 1-percent cut in Medicare payments be- ginning that year. The penalties increase to 2 percent by 2016 and 3 percent by 2017. HHS may continue to decrease Medicare payments 1 percent per year up to 5 percent if 75 percent of office- based physicians do not achieve mean- ingful use by 2018. Pamela Chapman, e-MDs director of
clinical product and regulatory affairs, says the biggest challenge in preparing for Stage 2 from an EHR vendor’s per- spective is ensuring that meaningful use data collection doesn’t affect physician workflow. “For instance, we’ve made changes to
the way physicians document patient immunization information. We’ve tied that documentation into clinical decision support so all of the information is incor- porated into the workflow for physician users,” she said. At press time, e-MDs planned to have
its EHR product certified and listed on the CHPL by the end of October. e-MDs is helping physician-users prepare to meet meaningful use Stage 2 require- ments by offering webinars and online training modules. Physician clients of e- MDs will start receiving their software upgrade in mid-December, according to Ms. Chapman. Contact your EHR vendor to find out
when you’ll receive the upgraded soft- ware and to ensure you’ll have enough time to test the system.
TMA weighs in CMS adopted Stage 2 EHR meaningful use rules last summer and increased the measures physicians must achieve to earn incentives in Stage 2. For example, Stage 1 requires physicians to give pa- tients their clinical summaries in three days. In Stage 2, physicians have only
Texas Medical Board appearance?
Pending
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www.texmed.org/texmed2014 December 2013 TEXAS MEDICINE 47
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