During the Health IT Policy Committee's two-day hearing this week, health care providers and specialists expressed concern about the feasibility of meeting forthcoming "meaningful use" requirements, Healthcare IT News reports.
The federal economic stimulus package offers incentive payments to hospitals and physicians who demonstrate meaningful use of health IT systems.
However, many health care providers say they will face difficulty complying with the new rules because of:
- The amount of time required to adopt new health IT systems;
- The high costs of purchasing and installing such systems; and
- The lack of specificity in the current meaningful use recommendations.
Experts said many health care providers might delay health IT purchasing until they know which systems will be interoperable (Manos, Healthcare IT News, 10/28).
Specialists Speak Up
During the Policy Committee hearing, medical specialists raised concerns that many of the current recommendations appear to target primary care providers and could prove challenging for some specialists.
However, other experts noted that some physicians blur the lines between primary care providers and specialists. They said the meaningful use rules might need to include some flexibility to accommodate the capabilities of different health care providers.
National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal agreed that some flexibility might be necessary in the rules. He said, "I don't think it was understood that we weren't intending to have all the measures apply to all specialists" (Mosquera, Government Health IT, 10/27).
Road Ahead
During the meeting, Blumenthal also laid out several new tasks for the Health IT Policy Committee. They include:
- Health IT Framework: Blumenthal called for the committee to update the national health IT plan to account for new privacy and security regulations, the economic stimulus funding and the Obama administration's policies.
- NHIN: He also urged the Policy Committee to examine the Nationwide Health Information Network and determine whether it serves as an effective model for health data exchange.
- Privacy and Security: Finally, Blumenthal announced that the Policy Committee would create a work group to help develop a national policy for health IT privacy and security. He said the Policy Committee's privacy and security work group would collaborate with the security work group of the Health IT Standards Committee (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 10/28).