HIMSS to HHS: Time to reset health IT expectations
As frustrations mount among providers that the Department of Health & Human Services’ expectations for health IT are unrealistic, it’s time to re-establish expectations, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) told HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell in a letter.
“While we champion a vision of coordinated care leading to a positively transformed health system in the United States, we want to express our concerns that the road to that goal has become rocky and offer solutions to address these concerns,” according to the letter.
HIMSS expressed a desire to work with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) on its revision of the federal health IT strategic plan “to review the multitude of overlapping programs, determine how they currently fit into the larger health IT blueprint and formulate a best approach to revising expectations and timelines working within congressional and administration intent.”
The association also would like to work with HHS agencies to promote the following three policy levers:
- The EHR incentive program, for which HIMSS recommends an adjustment to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid’s (CMS) 2015 requirement to one three-month quarterly reporting period versus a full year.
- Interoperability: HIMSS supports the ONC’s interoperability vision but has recommendations for fine-tuning it.
- Electronic reporting of clinical quality measures (CQMs), for which HIMSS recommends a review of the current barriers providers are facing and development of a roadmap for mandatory EHR-enabled CQM reporting for all CMS quality reporting and value-based purchasing program.
Read the full letter.