WASHINGTON – An alliance that claims more than 2,300 community-based hospitals as members is pressing Congress for a legislative fix to the final rule on meaningful use to ensure that every hospital receives its fair share of incentive payments under the HITECH Act.

After having tried in vain to have the issue addressed before the federal rule was final, the Premier healthcare alliance submitted its statement Tuesday to the House Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health at a hearing on meaningful use. The panel chairman is Pete Stark (D-Calif.).

At issue: health systems with multiple inpatient facilities operating under one provider number.

The final meaningful use rule would allow only one Medicare incentive base payment per year for multiple inpatient facilities operating under the same Medicare provider number. By contrast, an identical health system whose inpatient facilities each operate under its own Medicare provider number would receive a base payment for each facility, Premier noted.

"This is a crucial issue for Premier alliance hospitals and could financially handicap co-located and multi-campus hospitals' ability to implement EHRs in a timely manner," the alliance wrote in its statement. "More than 50 Premier alliance hospital systems representing more than 100 inpatient facilities are affected by this methodological error by CMS, which will cost them millions of dollars in EHR incentive payments."

"Despite receiving hundreds of comments on this specific issue in response to its proposed rule published on Jan.13, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) chose not to make any changes to its methodology for calculating a qualifying hospital's Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive payment," Premier said. "By not modifying its methodology, CMS creates an arbitrary and inequitable distinction between identical hospital systems based solely on whether a system has multiple inpatient facilities operating under a single Medicare provider number."

The government released the final rule on meaningful use on July 13. Initial industry reaction was mostly positive, with kudos given to CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology for having dropped an all-or-nothing approach and provided greater flexibility in the rule.