Opinion: EHR Incentive Program Needs More Clarity, Accountability

In an opinion piece for The Hill‘s “Congress Blog,” Jonathan Bush — co-founder, chair and CEO  of athenahealth, a provider of cloud-based electronic health records and  physician services — writes that the potential of the meaningful use program to  improve patient outcomes and reduce health care costs “will only be realized”  with the necessary transparency “that’s required to measure whether the money is  being used for the purpose Congress intended.”

Under the 2009 federal economic stimulus package, health care providers who  demonstrate meaningful use of certified electronic health records can qualify  for Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments.

According to Bush, “The government has no way of verifying that the  physicians who claim to have met the meaningful use criteria are actually using  health information technology in any meaningful way.” He notes that this “could  lead to enormous disparities between what physicians and hospitals are able to  do with their EHRs and their actual ability to improve patient care” and  potentially waste “billions of taxpayer dollars.”

Bush writes, “The government needs to take steps now to ensure that  meaningful use is actually meaningful.”

To achieve this end, Bush recommends that CMS and the Office of the National  Coordinator for Health IT “urge EHR vendors to release more performance data so  that providers can make informed purchases.” Bush adds that health care  “providers and EHR vendors should be required also to submit actual performance  data to CMS” to qualify for incentive payments.

In addition, Bush recommends that CMS:

• “[E]nact a strong enough audit process to ensure that providers have  actually done the work necessary to make the use of their EHR meaningful —  before taxpayer dollars are distributed”; and
• Establish “a registry-based submission process for provider attestation”  (Bush, “Congress Blog,” The Hill, 12/13).

Source: iHealthBeat

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