CMS Meaningful Use is Effectively Over

Acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt on Tuesday shocked many in healthcare when he laid out an aggressive timeline to replace the Meaningful Use program - a program where the Federal Government wasted millions of tax payer dollars and countless hours of wasted time by physicians and their staff. On Tuesday, January 12th at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco Mr. Slavitt stated “the Meaningful Use program as it has existed will now be effectively over and replaced with something better. Mr. Slavitt went on to explain the three import levels moving forward:

“First, setting policy and acting as a regulator to make sure the laws of Congress and the rules we set advance the interests of consumers and taxpayers. Here our most important job is to listen and learn. Policy is often a blunt instrument and in the real-world it takes continual adjusting.

“Second, we act as an operator, providing service to our beneficiaries, technical support to health care providers, and partnering with states and commercial health plans to deliver our programs.  Our mantra here is to give people the tools they need to thrive in the face of significant change.

“And third, we often operate as a market signaler, acting as a catalyst to bring together the disparate pieces of the health care to make improvement more rapidly and more efficiently such as how we pay for care.

“And finally, we are deadly serious about interoperability. We will begin initiatives in collaboration with physicians and consumers toward pointing technology to fill critical use cases like closing referral loops and engaging a patient in their care. And technology companies that look for ways to practice "data blocking" in opposition to new regulations will find that it won't be tolerated."

Mr. Slavitt went on to say “the implementation of the bipartisan MACRA legislation is a major item squarely on our punch list that has everyone's attention. At it’s most basic level it is a program that brings pay for value into the mainstream through something called the Merit-based incentive program, which compels us to measure physicians on four categories: quality, cost, the use of technology, and practice improvement.

“The stakes are high for this program. As any physician will tell you, physician burden and frustration levels are real. Programs designed to improve often distract. Done poorly, measures are divorced from how physicians practice and add to the cynicism that people who build these programs just don't get it. Over the next several months, we will be rolling out details, but for now a couple of themes.

“Let me dive a little deeper on the technology component. Now that we effectively have technology into virtually every place care is provided, we are now in the process of ending Meaningful Use and moving to a new regime culminating with the MACRA implementation.”

“The Meaningful Use program as it has existed will now be effectively over and replaced with something better. Since late last year we have been working side by side with physician organizations across many communities -- including with great advocacy from the AMA -- and have listened to the needs and concerns of many. We will be putting out the details on this next stage over the next few months, but I will give you a themes guiding our implementation. For one, the focus will move away from rewarding providers for the use of technology and towards the outcome they achieve with their patients."

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