The American College of Cardiology, a 40,000-member nonprofit medical society, has issued a statement supporting the federal government's decision to delay Stage 2 meaningful use.
In a 455-page proposal released Feb. 23, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) laid out the details for how it will raise the bar for healthcare providers to qualify for incentives. Among its provisions, CMS will delay the start of Stage 2 until 2014 instead of 2013.
[See also: Stage 2 MU released at last.]
"The ACC supports the use of health information technology as an important tool for providing high quality patient care," said William Oetgen, MD, the group's senior vice president of science and quality. "To ensure that health IT is properly implemented, the requirements for meaningful use must be deliberate and specifically tailored to ensure that decisions are not made merely to capture incentives, but to change the way care is furnished in this country."
"CMS made the right decision in delaying Stage 2 implementation to give physicians, practices and hospitals more time to adjust to the new requirements," he added. "We are encouraged to see that CMS has included reporting to specialized registries as one of the proposed menu-set objectives and look forward to reviewing the proposed standards and certification requirements that will help to implement this new objective."
[See also: Stage 2 ready for primetime.]
According to Oetgen, ACC will continue to review the proposed regulation, in hopes of finding "additional thoughtful changes to the program that will promote an efficient, patient-centered healthcare community rather than increasing healthcare complexity."
Oetgen said the ACC appreciates CMS' consideration of the group's input and the recognition of the importance of specialty society registries.
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