Home Forums Discussions Meaningful Use Meaningful use failed

Just curious how many docs out there failed to get Meaningful use 1 and any incentive money? And what was the cause of the failure. Just starting with AC and trying to decide if it is worth the effort. I know I am to late to the party for meaningful use 1 but assessing if it is worth the effort on the back end when the gov starts it automatic withholds. Thanks Gwendolyn , Maine

My opinion: it is hard to fail, especially using Amazing Charts. AC has excellent built in prompts and reports to guide you and allow you to track progress. It also generates reports in case you are audited.

There are harder ways to earn $18k in 3 months.

Gwendolyn,

That is a great name by the way! Welsh celtic?

Is it worth the effort of going after MU?

All of my partners that have attempted stage 1, phase 1 have gotten the 18K check, 5/5 and one uses e-clinical. I have chosen not to, even stage 1, phase 1.

I am of the opinion, that from here on out, it may not be worth the effort, and one may want to invest time and effort into enhancing efficiencies in the office to overcompensate the eventual penalties.

I have chosen instead, to put a concerted effort into getting a functioning portal system going to reduce phone tag, voice mail, chatter on the phone, and postage costs.

Going after the MU and developing a portal system does not have to be mutually exclusive, but I am of the opinion, in 3-5 years small outpatient primary care practices not utilizing a portal will be in the minority, but those not participating in further MU stages will be in the majority.

To me it comes down to fulfilling patient's expectations and needs first and foremost, and enhancing office efficiency and reducing or at least maintaining overhead expenditures.

I think if one can do a cost analysis of the time and effort required for input of data to achieve MU from phase 1 stage 1 onward, and determine if those efforts actually enhance patient care and satisfaction, reduce overhead and increase production, then do it. But it will need to be determined individually for each practice.

I just looked at my analytics and 2/3 of my patients are currently utilizing a patient portal. I have said this multiple times but getting a functional portal up and running has been the single best business decision I have made in 20 years of practice.

I hope this helps, and I suspect you will get quite a few more perspectives, and this is what makes this user board a fantastic resource.

Hello Jimmie: the first name is welch origin but I am Irish. I agree with your perspective on this. I just spent almost a year completing and submitting NCQA PCMH. I have no idea what level I will achieve nor do I care at this time. It was a total waste of my time. I doubt seriously if any of this truly impacts patients health better than the timed honored patient-physician relationship. If you care and put the time in you will get results that you want for your patients. I guess my thinking on the MU thing is commercial insurance is going to tie into this concept and pay for performance will be the norm. Any thoughts? Gwendolyn O'Guin. Family doc Maine.

Meant welsh..although welch might work later on. /-; Gwendolyn

Gwendolyn,

My dad has done a bit of genealogical investigative work and traced the origins of our surname to Oldham County, Kentucky to the 1790's when the courthouse burned with the records. I have a suspicion we are Irish, as there is a small village south of Longford with the same name.

To the matter at hand, the MU thing. I had a hunch after the initial 3-6 months of conversion from paper to electronic records that my efficiency in the office would improve, which did pan out, and more than made up for my investment to go from paper to electronic.

But when I started to incorporate Updox about one year into it and then the portal I was pleasantly surprised that my efficiency improved even further. I saw no reason to go after any of the MU money for that reason alone, but as you indicate I think there will be pay for performance issues coming down the pike.

Pay for performance is the stronger reason in my mind not to do any MU or PQRS. I may be wrong, but unless you cherry pick your patient type, there will likely be reduction in reimbursement because of poor quality metric scores. I am of the opinion gathering the granular data will further reduce efficiency in the office.

I want to make it entirely clear, that these thoughts are made without any political, religious or any other designs, and Bert(administrator)may correct me, but I think rational objective thought is still allowed on the user board.

I hope this helps.

Hi Jimmie : obviously I have been gone in computer cyber space inputting data from my old EMR to AC. I have used an EMR since 1995 and the efficiency is the bonus. I too am not sure about MU I have not done up doc with portal yet just trying to get locked and loaded to get off the ground with AC. I ASSUME smaller bites is the way to go here? I have to input everything except the demographic which I could migrate from old to new. I can say this I will not do this again. I just finished submitting my survey tool for NCQA Patiient Centered Home..totally a waste of my time..pray tell why did I even do it. Anyway thank you for the information on my name. I have traced my last name to county cork Ireland...cool little town spelled just like my last name. Have a great thanksgiving and thanks for your insight. Gwendolyn

Gwendolyn,

I am sorry for not being more precise in my English above, but we have two different last names.

Doing it in stages is best.

Happy thanksgiving to you as well.

Hi Gwendolyn,

I've attested to MU for three consecutive years: 2011, '12, and today I attested to '13.
While there is significant button clicking which slows down work flow a little, a good multi-tasker can still have truly meaningful visits w/ patients despite the decreased efficiency of clicking a million buttons a day to get MU attestation.

The bulk of the money is in the first three years: $18K, $12K, $8K.
$38K isn't chump change for my solo office, that's why I went for it and succeeded. I think it's worth it for stage 1.
However the reason why I'm not attesting to Stage 2 or 3 is the exponential effort to comply with decreasing reward ($4K and $2K for years 4 & 5). I'm withdrawing from Medicare effective Jan 1, 2014 so as to avoid the MU and PQRS penalties for non-reporting.
sincerely,
Adam

Hello, I am a consultant working with a solo practitioner in Massachusetts. We are starting off on PCMH and was wondering if you have some tips and tricks that may be helpful with configuration. Did you flag patients for important conditions? How did you do tracking of orders, referrals, etc.

Would love your thoughts.

I have done the MU report 3 times - from May 2012 to Feb 2014; for only 2013; with and without Mid Level practitioners

all the results show eRx at 34%. I send more than 90% scripts at eRx.

why only 34% in all scenarios?? is there a bug in the program?

I failed the test because of this.
Any one else had this problem?

Ravi were your prescriptions all codified if not they don't count; I got the eRx penalty because of noncodified status

Ravi then there is the notice received yesterday that Amazing Charts is not certified for 2014 Meaningful Use and will not be until the summer so don't know how this affects your plight; the codified part I think still holds.

I don't qualify to attest for MU this year because my staff didn't put enough heights in the Vital Signs -- and I didn't notice it until I ran the MU report.

Otherwise, I could attest for MU-1 for 2013 (would have been my 3rd year.)

Supposedly AC is going to get it together for MU2 2014 -- you only have to attest to 90 days the first year of MU-2

I am giving up on the MU program -- riding herd on all the useless decision making and "quality" management is impossible without adding an employee dedicated to that task. There is no money in my budget for that, and the Medicare penalties are less than what it would cost to hire someone to be sure all the boxes got clicked.

I am with you Tom; looks like the penalty will max out at about 5-7% decrease in reimbursement. Would rather add an additional patient to the schedule than be a data input clerk since it would be me doing all the input. But now if they tie participation or licensure into the MU/PQRS picture that would be interesting.

We are unable to file for meaningful Use for 2013 because we forgot to send a test message to the state vaccine registry that is currently unable to interface with EMR's anyway.

@ randy ...cough... i don't think they'll audit you over that ...cough... but, i'm not a lawyer, nor do i purport to give any real advice ...;)

You are allowed to take an exemption for the state vaccine registry when you run the meaningful report
Grenville

Thanks I'll give that a try. My nurse had talked to the Medicaid people already and they said we are SOL but I'll look again.

I have the state of Ohio immunization registry working (IMPACT)...started sending real data over a month ago...some old data was in from 2010 that is worthless and I need to fix it, but it is working..

Every time I see the title of this thread, "Meaningful Use Failed"... I think, "yes, it did".

I am going to join what appears to be a large number of AC users who simply ignore MU.

AC is a perfectly workable electronic record at a reasonable price. Combined with Dragon and UpDox and Win-7 handwriting, input is really quite easy.

The MU bells and whistles are just that -- distractions.
I plan to be much more efficient in the future, and simply turn my back on MU. Staffing to avoid the penalty would cost more than the penalty. I will just have to see a few more patients to make up the decreased revenue.

So far we are staying above water, but the end looks near.

I think one potential catch 22 is the ICD9 meaningful use attestation phase overlapping the the implementation of ICD10 this year.
http://www.poweryourpractice.com/el...s-meaningful-use-and-the-icd-10-overlap/

Is it getting impossible to maintain your income in Oregon?

Here is my concern with the whole issue of government "comply or be penalized" regulations. Do any of you really believe it will stop there? Do you really in your hearts and from what you have seen happen in the last 10-15 years think that not complying and being simply monetarily penalized is all that will happen? If so, think again. Trust me, this is just one of many steps that are in the works. No, I am not claiming to be psychic (psychotic maybe) but my predictions have all pretty much come true these last 25 years. Sooner or later it will not be a simple monetary penalty for not complying it will be the issuance of your license to practice medicine. Don't have a teaching license, go to jail for educating children in public. Don't have a driver's license, better park that Model T. Shoot an injured deer out of season, better be ready to hand over your shotgun. Don't meet MU guidelines...turn in your medical license. Throughout our entire society it does not matter that you are doing good deeds or that you are performing safely....ain't got the sheepskin....better hope you can throw the pigskin.

And, sure, it is now only Medicare demanding this but, come on people, commercial insurances are not going to be outdone in having to reimburse you less for doing more work. My God, who of you ever dreamed 10 years ago there would be something called ObamaCare? And, sadly, these changes are not only rolling out on the health care carpet, they are rolling out in every aspect of our society. Does anybody think Sheriff Andy Griffith would be hired anywhere in this country today? Would Marcus Welby be revered or deterred?

Ok, enough. I hate MU, I detest what is happening in our profession and in our society as a whole but I for one feel powerless and as one will be powerless. If we want things to change we have to make it happen....just wish I knew how. Wish I would not have had to be one of many who just rolled over and gave up. But I am old and tired.

Update - was able to get the MU report to go through with the exemption which is a positive sign. The government had previously told me I would not be eligible. The good news is you can't always trust government advice, the bad news is you can't always trust government advice.

I am in the midst of submitting my meaningful stage 2. I need to upload a batch file ending in CSV. I gather I have to save the results of my meaningful use data to that file and uploaded to Medicare. If anyone knows how to do it, I would appreciate the instruction. Thank you so much. Solodoc.