Price transparency and MU in the news
The biggest health IT news this week involved price transparency and Meaningful Use.
Three of the nation’s largest health insurance companies--Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealthcare--will work with the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) to develop and provide consumers free access to an online tool that will offer comprehensive information about the price and quality of healthcare services.
“You have to give up control to get power,” said Mark Bertolini, chairman, CEO and president of Aetna, speaking at the National Healthcare Innovation Summit in Boston. “Why should we care what our fee schedules say? They’re all pretty close anyway.” The people who really need to know prices are those paying out of pocket, he added. “To create a retail marketplace, we need to give them the information.
The new transparency tool that HCCI is developing will aggregate pricing data from commercial health plans, as well as Medicare Advantage and Medicaid health plans, if the states agree. The information will be available to consumers, purchasers, regulators and payers in an accessible, comparable and easy-to-use format.
Meanwhile, only 20 percent of providers will achieve Meaningful Use (MU) Stage 2 this year, John D. Halamka, MD, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), predicted during his talk on federal mandates at the iHT2 Health IT Summit.
“I see a number of providers exiting the program,” he said, adding that many will choose to absorb Medicare penalties as it’s cheaper than the technology and resources needed to attest to MU.
EHR certification and MU requirements should focus more on outcomes and less on prescriptive requirements. When it comes to MU Stage 3, 80 percent of the proposals so far have workflow, standards readiness or vendor burden issues, he said. “The [HITPC] needs to make them more about outcomes so providers and vendors can achieve policy outcomes in a way they think best.”
When asked if he thinks there will be a MU Stage 4, he said that hopefully the program will sunset and everything gets rolled into a system that focuses on merit-based incentives. “Merit-based incentives for achievement and innovation instead of regulatory penalties seems like a better idea.”
I bet many of you would agree.
Beth Walsh
Clinical Innovation + Technology editor
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.