Posted by EHR Analyst on Sun, Jan 24, 2010 @ 09:08 PM
According to the 94,700-member American Academy of Family Physicians, while it "supports the goals" behind the proposed regulations, it believes that the regulations-as proposed-impose hurdles that will challenge small- and mid-sized practices' ability to qualify for the ARRA's health IT subsidies.
A chief concern is that collecting and reporting performance data could become an administrative burden, said Steven Waldren, director of the AAFP's Center for Health IT. He said that his recommendation for the final rules would be to "focus on meaningful use and not reporting on the meaningful use."
Physicians who meet the requirements could receive $44,000 to help pay for their purchase of an electronic health record system.
"They should not implement health IT to get the $44,000," Waldren said, they should do it to improve quality and efficiency and to move toward transforming their practices into a patient-centered medical home. "And, if you do that, you'll get $44,000. I don't think there's anything in there that physicians shouldn't be doing or striving for."
Waldren added that the AAFP is specifically encouraged by the proposed regulations' focus on care coordination, quality and patient-centered care, and he also said the AAFP supports the rules' promotion of using electronic prescribing; clinical decision support; analysis and reporting of evidence-based measures of quality and performance; and the sharing of health information and educational resources with patients.
For full details, read this article from Modern Healthcare.
Posted by EHR Analyst on Wed, Dec 16, 2009 @ 08:03 PM
The federal definition and criteria for the "meaningful use" of electronic health-record systems seems to be getting delayed. It was due today, but that deadline passed today at noon.
Excerpts of an article from Modern Healthcare authored by Joseph Conn.
According to the author, the federally chartered Health Information Technology Policy Committee took the time Tuesday to parse some recommendations from one of its work groups on what to do about standards for electronic laboratory orders. The policy committee then hustled up a vote to accept the eleventh-hour recommendations so they still could be considered by rulemakers before the first round of meaningful-use criteria are published.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 called for creation of the HIT Policy Committee to advise HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology on a host of subjects. Committee members have spent a significant portion of their time since the group was launched in May dealing with meaningful-use recommendations. Earlier this year, the HIT Policy Committee made several suggestions to the ONC on the meaning of "meaningful use."
It recommended three tiers of increasingly more stringent criteria lasting for periods of two years each. The years 2011, 2013 and 2015 were chosen as the starting and ratcheting up dates to coincide with break points in the subsidy payment regime. The recommendations the HIT Policy Committee voted on Tuesday came from its information exchange work group and specified standards for use by providers when electronically ordering laboratory tests for a patient.
Work group Co-chairman Micky Tripathi of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative said 70% to 80% of lab transactions are not performed using EHR systems. The failure of the healthcare industry to come together on a common set of messaging standards and their implementation guides for labs is "in many ways, the Achilles' heel of meaningful use," he said.
"There are a lot of standards out there that are not used, and many standards that are used in various ways," Tripathi said. In addition to 5,200 commercial labs, there are 8,500 hospital laboratories, 400 public health laboratories and 115,000 small laboratories in physician offices and clinics, Tripathi said.
A lack of consensus on laboratory standards has remained an intractable barrier to interoperability for multiple reasons, Tripathi said. Large national reference laboratories control 25% of the market, he said, but are only part of a contingent of commercial laboratories, all of which are ineligible for EHR subsidy payments under the stimulus law. Thus, they won't receive direct incentives to respond if laboratory standards are included in the meaningful use criteria.
Commercial labs are covered under the federal Clinical Laboratory Improvements Amendments of 1988 or CLIA, but the law permits variance in regulation by the states. Many states require that lab results only be transmitted to the providers who ordered the tests, which precludes direct transmission to a patient through his or her personal health record, for example.
Posted by EHR Analyst on Mon, Nov 23, 2009 @ 10:49 PM
The federal government should conduct a small pilot project with a number of vendors and a variety of physician practices before
incentive programs for meaningful use of
electronic health records start, the Medical Group Management Association recommends.
The pilot would ensure that the process of demonstrating meaningful use is achievable and practical, the Englewood, Colo.-based association said in a recent letter to David Blumenthal, M.D., national coordinator for health information technology. "This pilot could assist in determining potential roadblocks to program success and identify solutions to those roadblocks."
MGMA offered a series of recommendations in its letter. Among them:
- Avoid reliance on third-party compliance. "Several of the draft meaningful use criteria require, for example, the reporting of percentages of patients undergoing specific tests. We strongly encourage you not to impose arbitrary 'thresholds' that physicians would have to meet for the reporting of these types of measures." Physicians, MGMA notes, can't force patients to take tests.
- Create a simple process for physicians to demonstrate meaningful use. "We recommend that attestation and/or survey instruments serve as the primary methods of demonstration. This would be especially important for the initial phases of the program and could be verified through an audit process. The development of a complicated and time-consuming process for practices to prove that they meet the incentive qualifications will result in fewer organizations transitioning to EHRs."
Text of MGMA's letter to Blumenthal
Source:
Health Data Management
Posted by EHR Analyst on Thu, Aug 20, 2009 @ 12:54 AM
Vice President Joe Biden announced almost $1.2 billion in grants to help health-care providers convert to electronic medical records, during a stop in Chicago.
Biden also pitched the importance of the $787 billion stimulus program in stabilizing the economy.
“We stopped the free fall,” the vice president said. “Now we are beginning to ascend again.”
Biden made the health-records announcement at a Chicago hospital during an appearance today with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
“You are going to be able to save a lot more lives and save tens of billions of dollars,” Biden told about 100 medical professionals and elected officials.
The grants will be funded by the stimulus program that Congress approved and President Barack Obama signed in February.
Biden’s office said the money will help health-care providers qualify for new incentives available in 2010 to those that make substantial use of electronic records.
The vice president pointed to his own medical history and his frustration with repeatedly having to provide the same information, often from a clipboard.
“How many times do I have to fill out, ‘Yeah I had asthma, yeah I had two craniotomies’?” he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: John McCormick in Chicago at jmccormick16@bloomberg.net.
Source: Bloomberg News