Did Meaningful Use Try to Do Too Much?

When I was reading Michael Brozino’s post on EMR and EHR about the Value of Meaningful Use, I was hooked in by his comment that meaningful use standards only went halfway. I’m not sure if this was the intent of his comment, but I couldn’t help but sick back and consider if meaningful use missed the mark because it only went half way.

When I think about all of the various features of meaningful use, it really feels to me like ONC and CMS tried to bite off more than they could chew. They tried to be all things to everyone and they ended up being nothing to no one. Ok, that’s not perfectly correct, but is likely pretty close.

Think about all of the meaningful use measures. Which ones go deep enough to really have a deep and lasting impact on healthcare? By having so many measures, they had to water them all down so it wasn’t too much for an organization to adopt. I’m afraid these watered down measures and standards render meaningful use generally meaningless.

Certainly the EHR incentive money has stimulated EHR adoption. However, could this EHR adoption have had even more impact if it would have just focused on two or three major areas instead of dozens of measures with good intentions but little impact?

In many ways, this is just a variation on my wish that EHR incentive money would have focused on EHR interoeprability. As meaningful use stands today, we’ve made steps towards interoperability, but we’re still not there. Could we have achieved interoperability of health records if it had been our sole focus? Instead, we’re collecting smoking status and vital signs which get stored in an EHR and never used by anyone outside of that EHR (and some would argue rarely inside of the EHR).

The good news is we could remedy this situation. ONC and CMS have something called meaningful use stage 3. How amazing would it be if they essentially through out the previous stages and built MU stage 3 on 2-3 major goals? The foundation is there for MU stage 3 to have an enormous impact for good on healthcare, but I don’t think it will have that impact if we keep down the path we’re currently on.

Yes, I realize that a change like this won’t be easy. Yes, I realize that this means that someone’s pet project (or should I say pet measure) is going to get cut. However, wouldn’t we rather have 2-3 really powerful, healthcare changing things implemented than 24 measures that have no little lasting impact? I know I would.

Side Note: Think how we could simplify EHR Certification if there were only 2-3 measures.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

1 Comment

  • The problem with MU is that those who set up the standards didn’t understand the quality measures that needed to be set FOR EACH SPECIALTY.

    You would never expect a family practice doc to try to fit their practice into a surgeon’s quality measures, or vice versa. We’re pediatrics, and we can’t hardly meet ANY measures — there are exactly 7 that even apply to pediatrics, 6 of which are pretty useless.

    It would have been better to select 3-5 items for each specialty you want to target, and bring up the percentages gradually. It’s just so unfocused and even useless on some items.

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