On one day, we get two related stories from CMS. 

In the first, Farzad Mostashari, MD, the national coordinator for health information technology (the head dude as it relates to the HITECH subsidy for EHR systems) announced his support for delaying Stage 2 for meaningful use by a year, to 2014, for physicians and hospitals who attest to meeting the Stage 1 requirements in 2011.  In English, that means that if you can attest to the Stage 1 requirements this year, then you have until 2014 to meet the Stage 2 requirements.  It is not clear whether this extension will apply to providers who do not meet the Stage 1 requirements this year.

In the second story, CMS announced that providers can meet their clinical quality measure reporting requirements in 2012 via attestation instead of the expected electronic submission.  In English, that means that CMS will let you simply sign an attestation statement in 2012 that you are collecting the necessary quality measures and will not require you to actually submit those measures electronically.

The take-away is that getting this stuff in is actually harder than expected and will take longer than planned, so the plan is being relaxed in a couple of places.

The other take-away, however, is that the plan is moving forward.