Yesterday, the Health IT Standards Committee met to discuss how to apply standards and certification criteria to a definition of "meaningful use" of health IT, Government Health IT reports.
Under the federal economic stimulus law, hospitals and physicians who demonstrate meaningful use of electronic health records qualify for Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments.
During the meeting, two standards committee work groups offered presentations on their efforts.
The clinical operations group reported on a set of standards covering clinical documentation and electronic prescribing. The standards fall into four categories, based on a timetable for their potential implementation in 2011, 2013, 2015 and later.
In addition, the quality work group presented a similar framework outlining a pace for phasing in health IT incentive standards.
During the meeting, committee members also discussed the concept of "deployability" and weighed the potential cost differences between previously deployed standards and those yet to be implemented.
Hitting a Moving Target
Although the Health IT Policy Committee is tasked with recommending a definition for meaningful use, the committee tabled its initial recommendations last week and is working to develop a new draft.
John Halamka, co-chair of the standards committee and CIO of Harvard Medical School, said, "The definition of meaningful use will be evolving in the next 60 days," adding that this will require the standards committee to adapt their work to "a set of evolving criteria."
National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal recommended that the standards committee therefore focus on "things that get mentioned a lot" when developing meaningful use standards (Buxbaum, Government Health IT, 6/23).
Policy Committee To Tackle Efficiency
In related news, Blumenthal said the Health IT Policy Committee is working to add more measures to boost efficiency in its next draft criteria for meaningful use, Modern Healthcare reports.
Blumenthal spoke Tuesday in a presentation before the Congressional Health Care Caucus, a new group composed of Republican lawmakers.
He said the policy group plans to bolster its draft recommendations by calling for improved insurance billing and payment processes.
In addition, the national coordinator noted that the work group already included some efficiency-boosting clinical measures in its criteria, such as blood pressure monitoring and medication cost feedback. He said such measures also would help lower overall health care costs.
According to Blumenthal, officials could announce efforts to help physicians implement EHR systems by the end of the summer. He said such measures will be "a down payment on creating the infrastructure" to support EHR adoption.
Blumenthal also spoke about open-source systems and interoperability in regional EHR networks (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 6/24).
Push for Increased Patient Involvement in Health IT
In other related news, some advocates are calling for greater consumer involvement in meaningful use discussions as the federal government moves closer to releasing standards, Nextgov.com reports.
HHS has opened some meetings to the public and is seeking comment on its draft recommendations.
However, Michael Painter, senior program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said officials "could go further to talk about a variety of different public and consumer uses" for health IT.
Others are urging the government to ensure that a meaningful use definition grants patients an explicit right to access their health records.
Marc Donner, engineering director for Google Health, said, "Requiring recipients of federal funds who purchase EHRs to make patient medical records available online in (compatible formats), using nonproprietary vocabularies where possible, would further encourage (information sharing) and portability, both of which are key components to increased consumer adoption and empowerment" (Sternstein, Nextgov.com, 6/23).