Thoughts on MU

I recently spoke with Micky Tripathi, president and CEO of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative and chair of the federal Health IT Policy Committee’s Information Exchange Workgroup. With a seat up close to the latest action in the progress of Meaningful Use (MU) and all the associated issues, he offered some interesting insights.

Some have dubbed 2013 the year of EHR dissatisfaction, but Tripathi said some dissatisfaction “is just a regular part of the transition to and adoption of a new technology.” All industries go through a shakeout during which standards are settled and business consolidates around a few of the bigger players. “That trend is starting to take hold” in healthcare.

Tripathi said that MU has been a learning process but “very real progression is happening” which was always intended to be incremental. Stage 1 was designed “to get people using the systems and taking little tiny steps toward using the information the systems provide.” With Stage 2, “we now have the ability to push information electronically to the patient or to the next providers. In Stage 3, we are setting up the ability to query for information which is much more complex.”

When asked about the various criticism the program has faced in recent months, Tripathi said, “I agree that it may be that more time is needed for the industry to sort of gather its winnings and then move to the next level. But, Stage 2 is too close to talk about delaying the start. Vendors are certifying their products so we can’t change that now. Perhaps we can talk about extending on the back end how long providers have to accomplish Stage 2 and, by extension, when Stage 2 would start.”

A big issue, he said, is MU in addition to all the other changes impacting healthcare, such as ICD-10 and accountable care which represents “a fundamental change in the way 15 percent of the economy gets paid.” Laying MU on top of these other efforts adds up to a lot of work for providers.

Tripathi said the MU program is similar to investments other industries make all the time. “In terms of the money, if you think about this as a business problem and leave aside the fact that government is providing some of these funds, you start to see that this is very much like what happens in other industries as well. This is not just a giveaway--this is the government as a business. Medicare and Medicaid are businesses and the government is doing what Toyota and GM and Chrysler and Walmart do every day, which is invest in their supply chain—the  physician network that provides the services they pay for.”

Do you agree that MU is akin to solving a business problem? Please share your thoughts.

Beth Walsh

Clinical Innovation + Technology editor