EHR association responds to senators’ call to ‘reboot’ MU
The HIMSS EHR Association offered up its two cents on the Republican senators’ white paper, “Reboot: Re-examining the Strategies Needed to Successfully Adopt Health IT,” asserting that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS’) EHR incentive program should be maintained.
Nevertheless, given the challenges ahead, the EHR trade group told the senators in its May 16 comments that “for providers to best leverage health IT towards the aims of Meaningful Use and interoperability, Congress and the administration as well as providers and health IT developers will have to work together closely.”
The association addressed an area of deep concern in the senators’ white paper: interoperability between different EHR systems. The letter noted progress within healthcare organizations to achieve interoperability between systems, and the growing number of health information exchanges.
“Although nationwide exchange of health information has not yet been fully achieved, Stages 1 and 2 of the EHR Incentive Program and ongoing industry efforts have made significant advances toward broad interoperability,” according to the letter, which also stressed that the EHR vendor association strongly supports standards development initiatives to propel interoperability.
The EHR trade group disagreed with the senators’ claim that EHRs and health IT have led to inaccurate billing or ordering of unnecessary care. In fact, it argued that EHRs can decrease cost through effective clinical decision support.
The letter further asserted that the benefits of EHRs are far reaching. “As has been the case in other industries, having a larger number of users of EHRs and other health IT can only lead to greater advances; and in the case of healthcare, increased adoption actually increases the benefits from and likelihood of interoperability,” according to the letter.
In terms of regulatory timelines, the association stressed that more time is needed for providers to adopt Meaningful Use. In particular, it said the industry needs at least three years to implement Stage 2 before transitioning to Stage 3. “The current proposed timeline will not provide adequate time for CMS and [the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT] to develop all of the needed materials at a sufficiently high level of quality; for vendors to fully evaluate the hundreds of pages of regulation and supporting documents, then develop, test and certify the software; and for providers to install, then implement the software and become meaningful users.”
The entire letter is viewable here.