Majority Of Docs Won't Meet MU Stage 2

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

According to a new survey, 55 percent of physicians will not attest to Stage 2 of Meaningful Use.

A recent survey has found that the majority of providers will not be attesting to Stage 2 of Meaningful Use (MU) in 2015. iHealth Beat reports that Medical Practice Insider, along with SERMO, surveyed nearly 2,000 members of its physician social network.

According to Health Data Management, surveyed doctors reported the biggest hurdles to Stage 2 were patient engagement, lack of workflow usability, and excessive time consumption.

“I did Stage 1 in years one and two, but it is almost impossible to do Stage 2. It requires patients to have emails and engage my EHR,” one cardiologist explained, according to Medical Practice Insider. “Well, I have a lot of patients in their 80s and 90s, and they don’t have computers, let alone email.”

“I’ve done Stage 1 three times now. I have the option to do either Stage 2 or Stage 1 for the fourth time. I would rather stay with Stage 1 for now because my patients are reluctant to use messaging and I personally do not like the interface for my portal,” says one family practitioner who participated in the survey. “I do not have too many Medicare patients even though I am participating in an ACO, so I am not concerned much about a penalty. I just want the software to be perfected and be more usable.”

Health IT Outcomes reported in 2014 that although more than half of providers had EHRs at the time, Stage 2 MU seemed distant for many. The report showed that despite the adoption rate, only 5.8 percent of hospitals were able to meet all the Stage 2 criteria.