The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services remains committed to ensuring Medicare providers adopt electronic health records, despite an increase in claims upcoding that may be related to the systems, according to acting CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner.

Speaking at a Federation of American Hospitals conference March 5, Tavenner said CMS will spend more time this year educating providers about the use of electronic health records and will conduct “small, targeted audits” to ensure electronic billing is being “done properly.”

Tavenner said there has been an increase in upcoding in physician offices and hospital emergency rooms, possibly related to the use of EHRs.  

The increased use by providers of electronic health records may be helping CMS uncover more instances of upcoding than in the past, and/or the design of the system may somehow be contributing to the increase in upcoding, Tavenner said.

“These are kind of the natural growing pains we would expect” when new systems and methods of submitting bills are implemented, she said.