EHR Incentives Still Out of Reach of Anesthesia & Pain Providers
The EHR incentive program is targeted at office-based practices. Indeed, the original version of the program would have excluded anesthesiologists explicitly. The July 28, 2010 final rule however, restricted the definition of “hospital-based” so that it only covered physicians who provide 90 percent or more of their services on an inpatient basis or in the emergency department. Most anesthesiologists do more than 10 percent of their cases on an outpatient basis, so they are not disqualified on the grounds that they are hospital-based. Nevertheless, they will be ineligible for the bonus because fewer than 50 percent of their Medicare allowables will be generated in facilities with certified EHR systems and/or because fewer than 80 percent of their patients will have records in a certified EHR system.
Then there are the meaningful use standards. Stage 1 requires the eligible professional to meet or qualify for an exclusion from each of 15 core objective functionalities (e.g., drug interaction checks) plus five out of a possible ten “menu set” measures. The EHR must allow the eligible professional to report at least six clinical quality measures, three of which are mandatory and three of which must be selected from a group of 38 measures. The majority of these objectives and clinical quality measures do not apply to anesthesiology or pain medicine practice. So the chances of quailifying for the EHR incentives are slim for anesthesia and pain professional, as the law is currently written.
HHS Announces Intent to Delay ICD-10 Compliance Date
As part of President Obama’s commitment to reducing regulatory burden, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen G. Sebelius today announced that HHS will initiate a process to postpone the date by which certain health care entities have to comply with International Classification of Diseases, 10th Edition diagnosis and procedure codes (ICD-10).
The final rule adopting ICD-10 as a standard was published in January 2009 and set a compliance date of October 1, 2013 – a delay of two years from the compliance date initially specified in the 2008 proposed rule. HHS will announce a new compliance date moving forward.
“ICD-10 codes are important to many positive improvements in our health care system,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “We have heard from many in the provider community who have concerns about the administrative burdens they face in the years ahead. We are committing to work with the provider community to reexamine the pace at which HHS and the nation implement these important improvements to our health care system.”
