CMS Extends Attestation Deadlines For EPs And PQRS Program
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
CMS continues to give way on rigid MU deadlines, delaying deadlines to help increase participation.
CMS has announced it is extending the deadline for 2014 MU attestation and offering extensions to certain aspects of the Physician Quality Reporting System according to AAFP reports. “Eligible professionals now have until 11:59 p.m. ET on March 20, 2015, to attest to meaningful use for the Medicare Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program 2014 reporting year,” CMS said in a press release, according to MedPage Today.
“CMS extended the deadline to allow providers extra time to submit their meaningful use data. CMS continues to urge providers to begin attesting for 2014 as soon as they can.” The original deadline for attestation was Feb. 28.
CMS also extended until March 20 the deadline for certain types of data submission for the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) program. That extension applies to “EHR Direct or Data Submission Vendor that is certified EHR technology (CEHRT), [and] Qualified clinical data registries ... reporting for PQRS and the clinical quality measure (CQM) component of meaningful use for the Medicare Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program,” the agency said in a statement.
However, CMS offered no specific reason for the change, which does not affect deadlines for the separate Medicaid EHR Incentive Program. Physicians who successfully attest to EHR meaningful use for 2014 will receive an incentive payment and avoid a Medicare payment penalty.
Steven Waldren, M.D., director of the AAFP's Alliance for eHealth Innovation, said the AAFP heard from a number of family physicians who were concerned about meeting the original Feb. 28 deadline. “The deadline extension is good news for many family physicians,” he noted.
Waldren also cautioned the new deadline applies only to the attestation phase of the program, saying, “Physicians had until Dec. 31 to complete their EHR reporting. The next step, and the one affected by today's announcement, involves physicians logging into the CMS website and completing the actual meaningful use attestation process by inputting data into the system.”
The American Medical Association (AMA) expressed qualified praise for the MU extension, writing it “is pleased that the CMS has decided to extend the deadline for eligible providers to attest to MU, but is concerned that the program will still face low participation rates without substantial changes to its rigid requirements.”
There has been considerable pressure to delay or amend MU deadlines to allow the industry to catch up, including pressure to shorten the reporting period, pressure to which HHS ultimately felt. “Only 24 percent of physicians have attested to MU for 2014 as of the beginning of February,” Stack noted.
“The deadline extension underscores that the MU program is not working and that policymakers need to act on our recommendations to make it more flexible, remove the measures that physicians are having the most difficulty in meeting, and revamp the certification program so that electronic health record vendors can innovate to create products that better serve patients and physicians. We thank CMS for today's effort and hope that they will go further in addressing the problems with this program when they issue their Meaningful Use rules this spring.”