AHA advises against halt of MU program, but voices concerns
The American Hospital Association (AHA) officially weighed in on six Republican senators' April report that called for a “reboot” of Meaningful Use, agreeing with the legislators’ concerns about interoperability, privacy and security and the financial burden of the EHR incentive program but advised against putting the brakes on it entirely.
“Any interruption in incentive payments ... would be unfair to those who have made strategic plans and large investments on the policies in place today,” AHA Executive Vice President Rick Pollack wrote in the May 15 letter.
The AHA, however, said many points articulated in the senators’ report—“REBOOT: Re-examining the Strategies Needed to Successfully Adopt Health IT"—were valid, including concern on uneven progress in EHR implementation. “AHA continues to be concerned about the ‘digital divide’ between large, urban providers and small, rural providers. We applaud you for highlighting this disparity,” according to the letter.
The AHA also said it agreed with the report’s conclusion that EHR incentive programs would yield more benefits if the regulatory pace is slowed down, in particular to help all providers get up to speed on the requirements.
“We are concerned that the rules continue to be too complex, are too focused on specific functionalities, and regulate ahead of on-the-ground experience in many areas, such as using EHRs to generate and report quality measures,” Pollack wrote.
The AHA also outlined several recommendations to address concerns related to interoperability and Meaningful Use audits. For instance, the association urged the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) to take action to ensure that EHRs from different vendors are interoperable. In the area of audits, it asserted that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services auditors must be well informed about the EHR program requirements and how EHRs function. “To date, we have heard from our members that the auditors are not well informed, and the audits themselves are highly burdensome,” according to the letter.
In other remarks, the AHA said it disagrees with allegations that providers are using EHRs to bill Medicare for services that weren’t rendered.
The entire letter is viewable here.