Some of the Thinking Behind Meaningful Use Stage 2 – Meaningful Use Monday

Lynn Scheps is Vice President, Government Affairs at EHR vendor SRSsoft. In this role, Lynn has been a Voice of Physicians and SRSsoft users in Washington during the formulation of the meaningful use criteria. Lynn is currently working to assist SRSsoft users interested in showing meaningful use and receiving the EHR incentive money. Check out Lynn’s previous Meaningful Use Monday posts.

A great deal of work, discussion, and debate by the HIT Policy Committee and its Workgroup members went into developing the recommendations for meaningful use Stage 2 (discussed in the last two Meaningful Use Monday posts). Meetings were frequent and lengthy, but I tried to listen in on most of them to gain some insights into the thinking behind the decisions being made and the future direction of meaningful use. 

Committee members struggled with striking the right balance between aggressively pressuring providers so that adoption would be accelerated, on the one hand, and maintaining a realistic and practical view of their capabilities, on the other. Some committee members were adamant about staying on track to reach the Stage 3 end goals within the predetermined 2015 time frame, (i.e. remaining on the escalator, as the progression is often referred to), while others recognized that overburdening providers could lead to program failure, i.e., discouraging adoption by imposing unreasonable expectations that would cause providers to doubt their ability to earn the incentives and abandon the effort altogether. The debate led to an open question: does everything have to be accomplished under the umbrella of meaningful use?

 An issue that I think could have used more discussion is how to make meaningful use relevant for specialists—a subject raised frequently by Committee member Gayle Harrell. There was general agreement about the importance of having all types of physicians participate in the incentive program, and testimony from a variety of specialists was solicited. Other than suggesting a large number of new clinical quality measures, however, the basic recommendations are still predominantly primary-care focused. 

Lastly, there was a prevailing sense of frustration over the fact that the calendar did not allow time for an analysis of the experience of Stage 1 before requiring the definition of Stage 2.

About the author

Lynn Scheps

Lynn Scheps is Vice President, Government Affairs at EHR vendor SRSsoft. In this role, Lynn has been a Voice of Physicians and SRSsoft users in Washington during the formulation of the meaningful use criteria. Lynn is currently working to assist SRSsoft users interested in showing meaningful use and receiving the EHR incentive money.

   

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