A bill has been filed in Congress that would slash the Meaningful Use reporting period from one year to 90 days. This seems to be a challenge to CMS, which has reportedly held firm in the face of pressure to cut the reporting period on its own.
Supporters of the bill, which is backed by a broad coalition of industry trade groups, argue that a 365-day reporting period is unduly burdensome for providers, and will become even more awkward as MACRA requirements fall into place. Cutting the reporting period “will continue the significant progress providers are making to harness the use of technology to succeed in new payment and care delivery models,” argued a coalition of such groups in a letter sent to CMS last month.
That being said, it’s not clear how the structure of Meaningful Use incentives will play out under MACRA. So the reporting period change may or may not be as relevant as it might have been before the MACRA rules were set to be announced.
CMS leaders have said that the upcoming Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) – which will probably fall in place under MACRA in 2017 — is designed to unify incentive payments. Specifically, it integrates existing MU, PQRS and Value-Based Payment Modifier programs. MIPS payments will be based on a weighted score rating providers on four factors: quality (30%), resource use (30%), Meaningful Use (25%) and clinical practice improvement activities (15%). This suggests that a focus on reporting requirements is probably a matter of closing the barn door after the horse has left the stable.
On the other hand, since Meaningful Use isn’t going away completely, maybe cutting the reporting period required is necessary. If providers are being rated on a set of factors of which MU is just a part, reporting for an entire year could certainly impose an administrative burden. Why set providers up to fail by forcing them to overextend their resources on reporting?
I believe that reducing Meaningful Use requirements is a sensible step to take at this point. While there are probably those who would argue the point, I submit that MU has been pretty successful in motivating providers to rethink their relationship with HIT, and has even help a subset to completely rethink how they deliver care. Now, it’s time to move the ball forward, to a more holistic approach that goes beyond regulating care processes.
Admittedly, it’s possible that cutting the reporting period, or otherwise shifting the emphasis away from regulating HIT use, might cause some providers to slack off in some way. But to my way of thinking, that’s a risk we need to take. After investing many billions of dollars on promoting smart HIT use, we have to assume that we’ve done what we can, and focus on smart quality measures. With any luck, the new measures will work better for everyone involved.