Despite Deadline Extension, AMA Still Has MU Concerns

The American Medical Association (AMA) has announced that it supports Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)’ decision to extend the deadline for eligible providers to attest to meaningful use, but concerns still remain.

Yesterday, CMS made the new deadline for the 2014 reporting year March 20th at 11:59 pm, pushed back from February 28th. Specifically, according to a statement from AMA president elect, Steven Stack, M.D., the association is worried that the program will still face low participation rates without substantial changes to its rigid requirements.

"Only 24 percent of physicians have attested to meaningful use for 2014 as of the beginning of February. The deadline extension underscores that the meaningful use program is not working and that policymakers need to act on our recommendations to make it more flexible, remove the measures that physicians are having the most difficulty in meeting and revamp the certification program so that electronic health record vendors can innovate to create products that better serve patients and physicians,” Stack said. "We thank CMS for today's effort and hope that they will go further in addressing the problems with this program when they issue their meaningful use rules this spring," he added.