CMS launched a
new website that your providers must personally log into in order to be paid under the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program. The website, dubbed the "Medicare & Medicaid EHR Incentive Program Registration and Attestation System," also checks to see if your providers even qualify for the bonus payments.
If the site decides
you don't qualify under the 90% rule (most relevant to surgeons), you don't have a way to appeal -- and that may not change anytime soon, according to a CMS official I exchanged emails with.
Surgeons have an uphill battle to qualify as eligible providers (EPs, the term CMS uses to describe any provider who's able to be paid for the bonus, assuming they meet meaningful use) because of the 90% rule. The rule states that providers who furnish 90% or more of their allowed services in a hospital inpatient setting, or hospital emergency department, are not considered EPs.
"CMS has not issued information regarding the appeals process, so at this point we cannot comment on what will be appealable," my CMS source wrote to me in an email last week.
Unfortunately, this leaves many surgeons who invested in an EHR system hanging out to dry when it comes to a bonus. The 90% rule exists to prevent surgeons who use a facility's EHR system to qualify for meaningful use -- i.e. they did not invest time or money into an EHR, the
facility did. However many surgeons do pre-op and post-op in their office, and thus have a legitimate EHR of their own that they use in this situations, points out Robert Tennant, senior policy advisor for the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA).
Look for more coverage of this topic in a future
Part B News story.