Legislation adopted by Congress Friday will allow any physician who applies for a hardship exemption from the 2015 electronic health record (EHR) meaningful use program to be exempted from the penalties that would have been levied in 2017. This blanket exemption will alleviate burdensome administrative issues for both physicians and the agency.
Addressing the regulatory problem
The Patient Access and Medicare Protection Act (S. 2425) is intended to address the issues created by the delay of the Stage 2 modifications rule issued in October. The modifications rule revised meaningful use requirements to make them more realistic but did little to help physicians because it was finalized so late in the year.
Under the Stage 2 modifications, physicians could avoid a financial penalty if they attested to meeting the Stage 2 requirements for 90 consecutive days during 2015. But the modifications rule wasn’t published until Oct. 16, leaving fewer than the 90 minimum days left in the calendar year.
CMS previously stated that it would grant hardship exemptions for 2015 if eligible physicians were unable to attest as a result of the lateness of the rule. But CMS was legally only permitted to grant such exemptions on a case-by-case basis. That meant that many physicians would have been required to apply for exemptions, and CMS would have had to act on each application individually.
The meaningful use provision in the new legislation, for which the AMA was instrumental in securing support, will grant CMS the authority to process requests for hardship exemptions to physicians through a streamlined process.
Many members of Congress played key roles in advancing this provision of the legislation, including Rep. Tom Price, MD, R-Ga., and Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Ron Wyden D-Ore. Numerous members of the House and Senate leadership—both Republicans and Democrats—went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that this provision was considered prior to the end of the 2015 congressional session.
Physicians will have until March 15 to apply for an exemption from the 2015 meaningful use program year.
