MU at a crossroads?

Amid reports of increasing EHR adoption, it seems that Meaningful Use has reached a crossroads.

Six Republican senators have published a report critical of the progress of the MU program and called for a halt to the program and re-examination of its strategies.

“We seek comments on whether it would be in the best interest of CMS, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, vendors, providers, taxpayers and other stakeholders to hit ‘pause’ while re-examining the current procedures put in place to safeguard and ensure meaningful use of EHRs prior to forging ahead with Stage 2 and 3,” the senators wrote in the report entitled "Reboot: Re-examining the Strategies Needed to Successfully Adopt Health IT."

The senators' concerns include the lack of a clear plan toward interoperability, increased costs, lax security policies and procedures, and program sustainability.

Despite the ongoing debate which is sure to continue in light of the amount spent on electronic records and the incentive program, others are working toward innovation. For example, seeking a better, more efficient way to see his patients, William C. Thornbury, Jr., MD, RPh, CEO and medical director of Medical Associates of Southern Kentucky, found a way to do housecalls by smartphone.

Thornbury launched Me-Visit, a web portal that offers around-the-clock access to patients using a mobile device or computer. He had been receiving numerous requests for new patients that he couldn’t take on but learned the root cause was that 30 to 40 percent of the patients did not need to be seen in the clinic. After using the tool for about a year, Thornbury said 97 percent of his patients said they preferred it to going into the office. “We began to take more patients and spent more time with patients who needed it.”

Meanwhile, a bipartisan draft bill would create a uniform, national traceability system that tracks drugs from their manufacturing source through their final destination on drugstore shelves.

The discussion draft would amend the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to replace state product tracing laws with a nationwide electronic, interoperable unit level product tracing system.

Under the bill, every entity in the drug supply chain—including manufacturers, repackagers, wholesale distributors, third-party logistic providers and dispensers—would be required to input transaction information and ownership change information. No player in the chain could accept drugs lacking sufficient transaction information.

Licensing requirements for wholesale distributors and third-party logistic providers also are tightened in the bill. The FDA likewise would manage a publicly available online database of wholesale distributors. “This empowers both consumers and members of the pharmaceutical distribution supply chain to identify appropriately licensed wholesalers,” according to the senators’ April 22 statement on the draft.

"Over the past few years, we’ve had a record number of recalls and reports of tainted or ineffective drugs reaching our hospitals and drugstore shelves,” the statement said. “In fact, right now, we know more from a barcode on a gallon of milk than from a barcode on a bottle of pills, which could mean the difference between life and death. This draft bill would put steps in place to prevent and reduce those problems and help ensure our drug supply is safe.”