A group of nearly 50 of the nation’s largest physician and hospital organizations, including the AMA, Friday asked U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to make the meaningful use program more flexible and give physicians more time to implement software upgrades.
The AMA joined the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives and 46 other groups in a letter that said the move to the 2014 Edition of Certified Electronic Health Record Technology (CEHRT) would be difficult because only a fraction of 2011 Edition software products are certified for 2014 Edition standards. The letter asks Sebelius to extend the timeline for physicians to implement the 2014 software through 2015.
“It’s clear the pace and scope of change have outstripped the ability of vendors to support providers,” the letter states. “Providers need adequate time to learn how to use the newly deployed technology … our concerns regarding rushed implementations are heightened.”
The letter also calls for more flexibility in meaningful use requirements, citing the program’s “all or nothing” approach, in which missing a single objective results in failure for the program year.
“This additional time and new flexibility are vitally important to ensure that hospitals and physicians continue moving forward with technology to improve patient care,” the letter states.
Many physicians have noted that CEHRT systems are difficult to use and not well adapted to their practice workflows, a problem widely reported in a recent AMA study conducted by the RAND Corporation. It is becoming clear that the federal criteria vendors must meet to deliver certified products is hindering the ability of vendors to deliver products that meet physician’s needs.
From the beginning of the meaningful use program, the AMA has urged the federal government to adjust the program’s aggressive and rigid criteria to ensure a safe, orderly transition to widespread use of electronic health records (EHR). Most recently, the AMA urged a federal health IT panel responsible for setting program requirements to make substantive changes that would bring flexibility to the program.
“The AMA is increasingly alarmed that the meaningful use program continues to move full steam ahead without regard to the challenges faced by physicians, hospitals and vendors during the past few years,” AMA President Ardis Dee Hoven, MD, said in a statement. “Continued difficulties experienced in the current program are a clear sign that federal requirements must be revised.
“We have to recognize that if you require EHRs to be all things to all people—regulators, payers, auditors, lawyers—then it diminishes its ability to perform the most critical function: helping physicians support their patients.”
