Since 2011, medical providers across the nation have been struggling to meet the EHR Incentive Program requirements set by CMS in order to avoid negative payment adjustments on Part B medical reimbursement. There have been several revisions to the incentive programs over the years in effort to release the burden, however, providers still feel that the programs require too many administrative duties that take away from caring for patients. The most recent attempt to reduce this burden on providers was the introduction of the MACRA program. You can find out more about that here.
The MACRA program was a great solution proposed by CMS. It reduces the overall penalties and allows for most incentive payments for the clinicians. However, the program is still extremely hard on specialties who don’t regularly perform many of the quality measures required by the program. To help these types of providers, the medical associations have proposed that CMS add more categories to the existing hardship exemption categories that will accommodate these providers. These hardships would only need to be in place until more accurate tools are available for specialty providers to document performance. CMS has not yet responded to this letter.
