Federal CMS releases hardship exception application information

Wednesday, January 27, 2016 01:55 PM

Meaningful use program “effectively over”

On Jan. 11 Acting Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Andy Slavitt announced that the meaningful use program is dead. In prepared remarks Slavitt said, “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…. The meaningful use program as it has existed, will now be effectively over and replaced with something better.”

The announcement comes on the heels of an important bill signed into law by President Obama in December that provides blanket hardship exemptions for providers from meaningful use stage 2 penalties. (Read more background here from the Jan. 13 ASAP e-newsletter.) The exemption for 2015 meaningful use (MU) reporting will prevent a 3 percent penalty in 2017.

Click here to access the instructions and application. Physicians must apply for this exemption by March 15, 2016.