Consumer group responds to GOP senators' call for MU reboot

A coalition of consumer organizations has responded to the Republican senators who called for a reboot of the Meaningful Use (MU) program, recommending instead that the program be strengthened and maybe even accelerated.

In April, six senators issued a letter and accompanying white paper to Department of Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius outlining their concerns with the implementation of the HITECH Act. The senators invited stakeholders and others to comment.

In response, the coalition--led by the Consumer Partnership for eHealth and the Campaign for Better Care--defended MU, praising congress for creating a quick phased-in approach to health IT adoption. The coalition warned that stopping or slowing down MU would stifle innovation, hamper interoperability and postpone cost savings, noting that "[s]uspending Meaningful Use would only serve to keep us stuck in our current broken, unsustainable healthcare system." Rather than a reboot, they said MU needs to be leveraged to incorporate "new learnings" while continuing efforts already underway.

The group also implied that the senators were being unrealistic about the speed at which health IT is being adopted by the industry, pointing out that "we cannot transform the entire nation's health information backbone on a dime" and that "[o]bviously we cannot transform the nation from a mostly paper-based siloed system to electronic interoperability in a few years." 

Read the entire comment letter here.