The American Medical Association has a long list of ideas to make the Meaningful Use program better for physicians and shared its recommendations in a letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.

New Providence, NJ, May 06, 2014--athenahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHN), a leading provider of cloud-based services for electronic health records (EHR), practice management, and care coordination, and Summit Health Management (“Summit”), a provider of innovative management services for Summit Medical Group (SMG) and mid- to large-sized physician practices across the U.S., today announced that Summit will leverage athenahealth’s EHR, patient portal, and population health services for use across its growing team of more than 350 health care practitioners.

After a lengthy and often colorful hearing with providers, vendors and other stakeholders on the merits and drawbacks of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s certification program, the Health IT Policy Committee’s Adoption & Certification Workgroup formally endorsed narrowing certification requirements to interoperability, clinical quality measures and privacy and security, and embarking on an end-to-end, holistic, rapid improvement process to improve certification.

The need to improve EHR usability, advance interoperability and both simplify and slow down the timeline when it comes to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s certification and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid's Meaningful Use program all emerged as major themes during provider and vendor panel discussions held by the Health IT Policy Committee certification & adoption workgroup on May 7. Also, many expressed concern that IT resources dedicated to EHR certification and MU hindered innovation efforts.

The Certification & Adoption Workgroup shared much of its reasoning behind the proposed rule for the 2015 Edition of EHR technology certification criteria which was published in February. The Department of Health & Human Services accepted public comments until April 28.

The Health IT Policy Committee (HITPC) endorsed voluntary certification criteria governing transitions of care and privacy and security for long term and post-acute care and behavioral health providers during its meeting on May 6.

The rate of health IT adoption among U.S. hospitals has more than doubled over the past two years and over 9 in 10 hospitals possess certified EHR technology, according to Jennifer King, PhD, researcher with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.

The majority (69 percent) of U.S. consumers with chronic health conditions believe patients should have the right to access all of their healthcare information, and 51 percent believe that accessing their medical records online outweighs the privacy risks, according to an Accenture survey.