Five senators criticized the progress of the HITECH Act and questioned if the program had achieved its goals of increasing efficiency, reducing costs and improving the quality of care.
Republican Senators John Thune (South Dakota), Lamar Alexander (Tennessee), Pat Roberts (Kansas), Richard Burr (North Carolina) and Mike Enzi (Wyoming) published their concerns in a blog post on the Health Affairs website and wrote that that their main issue was with the lack of progress toward interoperability.
They praised the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT for developing minimal standards for exchanging electronic health records. However, they noted the proposal did not address all of the safety and cost concerns that the senators outlined in April 2013.
So far, taxpayers have invested $28 billion into the program, yet the senators wrote that “significant progress toward interoperability has been elusive.” They also wrote that the estimated $12.5 billion in savings to Medicare and Medicaid programs that fully integrated interoperability would generate have failed to materialize. In addition, they noted that 50 percent of doctors have not met the program’s requirements.
“The ONC roadmap provides a framework for responsibility, governance, and accountability in regard to the future development and implementation of interoperable EHRs,” the senators wrote. “But instead of offering specific objectives, deadlines and action items, ONC’s roadmap falls short on the nitty gritty technology specifics that vendors and providers need when developing IT products. We are left with many outstanding questions about how to achieve interoperability and how to address the cost, oversight, privacy, and sustainability of the Meaningful Use program.”
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.