Meaningful Use

Federal meaningful use requirements are well intentioned, but like a teacher who "teaches to the test," the federal meaningful use program created a very complicated system that might pass the test of meaningful use stages, but is not producing meaningful results for patients and clinicians.

With the maturing of the meaningful use incentive program, federal advisory groups are beginning to re-evaluate their roles and the best way to support providers moving forward. At the April 24 HIT Standards Committee meeting, federal officials announced changes in leadership along with proposals about how the organization might reconfigure itself.

In a letter to National Coordinator for Healthcare Information Technology Karen DeSalvo, MD, the Electronic Health Record Association argues that ONC's proposed Voluntary 2015 Edition Electronic Health Record Certification Criteria rule will cost too much, will disrupt progress and simply isn't "necessary or workable."

John Halamka, MD offers advice for IT leaders, discusses privacy and security and talks about his current book, GeekDoctor: Life as Healthcare CIO.

Cloud-based EHR company athenahealth will resign from the EHR Association. Its executives say it does not belong there, since it is neither an EHR company nor a software vendor.

Time and money are in short supply these days, even for folks at the 22-hospital Intermountain Healthcare. And with Stage 2 on the way and a new EHR platform being deployed, they’re feeling the crunch.

Sure, the EHR Incentive Program, with its $22 billion plus paid out thus far to meaningful users, might have helped bring the healthcare sector out of the Dark Ages and into the 21st Century, technologically speaking, but do these systems really improve the quality of patient care? A new study out says: for the most part, no.

Meaningful use just might have its financial perks. That's according to the top 25 highest performing meaningful users under the Electronic Health Record Incentive Program, all of whom brought in some $171 million in Medicare payments back in 2012.

ONC chief Karen DeSalvo said in an April keynote on Capitol Hill it's time for ONC to drive healthcare beyond the meaningful use of electronic health records toward the use of big data.

ONC chief Karen DeSalvo, MD, envisions an agency with new workgroups and a less siloed approach, with consumer and privacy advocates participating across all the groups.