The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) is the latest advocacy group in health IT to share its displeasure with the full-year reporting requirement for Stage 2 of meaningful use.
HIMSS wrote a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Sylvia Mathews Burwell this week expressing the group's disappointment in the full-year reporting period requirement in fiscal year 2015 for those attesting to Stage 2 of meaningful use. The requirement, presented in a series of modifications of Stage that were aimed to making attestation easier, was met with criticism from various industry groups including the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), and the American Medical Association (AMA).
HIMSS is the latest to shows its dissatisfaction with this move from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), urging the federal government to institute an "any three-month quarter" reporting period during requirement. They call requiring a full-year of reporting unrealistic based on the timelines, since the rule was finalized Aug. 29, 2014 and the fiscal year begins in October.
HIMSS fears that "large segments" of the provider community will drop out of the meaningful use program if the full-year reporting requirement is not amended.
