WASHINGTON – Experts at the eHealth Initiative (eHI) conference on Tuesday were concerned that physicians may not be ready to qualify for the criteria proposed in the Jan. 13 meaningful use rule.
Steven Findlay, a senior health policy analyst for the Consumers Union and a member of the Health Information Technology Standards Committee, said doctors have had "moments of shock and awe" over the proposed rule, which spells out how Medicare and Medicaid providers can earn bonuses under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
Steven Stack, MD a member of the American Medical Association Board of Trustees and a practicing emergency physician, said America has "whiz-bang" healthcare IT, but it's "not ready for prime-time use."
Stack said he is a proponent of using healthcare IT in a meaningful way, but the federal government "has put way too much on the table" in the new rule. Stack said the rule should have been limited to a few achievable aspects of healthcare IT use, such as e-prescribing and lab results until the barriers for use are worked out.
The proposed rule contains 25 measures that physicians must use to qualify for federal incentives beginning January 2011 and 23 measures hospitals must use to demonstrate meaningful use for payments beginning Oct. 1, 2011. After 2017, providers will be penalized for not using healthcare IT.
J. Leanard Lichtenfeld, MD, deputy chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society, said the process of luring physicians into adopting healthcare IT should have been kept simple. "Just paying doctors incentives doesn't mean it will happen," he said.
Lichtenfeld said the rule is "a tsunami" headed toward physicians.
"Doctors have no idea what's coming at them," Lichtenfeld said. "They don't have the time or money to adopt what they will need to qualify for meaningful use and they have already spent money on healthcare IT."
Findlay offered a positive note. He said he is "convinced" that the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) will be "entirely open" to comments on the rule, due by March 15.
Until the final rule is issued late this spring, doctors shouldn't shy away from moving forward with preparing to qualify for bonuses, Findlay advised.
