Will there be a delay for Meaningful Use 3?
There is already some talk going around the healthcare community. Could there possibly be a delay for MU stage 3? According to Fierceemr.com, this is a real possibility. According to the article, Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander is saying that providers have told him that Meaningful Use Stage 3 is a terrifying prospect that could cost millions, and in some cases even billions of dollars.
Alexander clarified he wants to slow down implementation of federal rules, not halt progress altogether, to ensure EHR implementation is done right the first time.
Three of four individuals who testified at the hearing agreed with the notion of delaying Stage 3, although two–David Kendrick, chair of the University of Oklahoma’s department of medical informatics, and Michael Mirro, past chair of the medical informatics committee for the American College of Cardiology and current chief academic and research officer at Parkview Mirro Center for Research and Innovation in Fort Wayne, Indiana–said the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s EHR certification program should continue.
“We want to delay [Stage] 3 of Meaningful Use in its entirety,” Mirro said, adding that Stage 2 has created “incredible inefficiencies” regarding workflow and usability. “We really have to digest the impact of [Stage] 2.”
David Kibbe, president and CEO of DirectTrust and a senior advisor to the American Academy of Family Physicians, called for “an immediate moratorium” on Stage 3 until Stage 2 is fixed.
“There are parts of Stage 2 that need to be fixed and improved to ensure that more hospitals and eligible providers can participate in Stage 2 before we go onto anything called Stage 3,” Kibbe said. In particular, he said, certification, interoperability, quality reporting and security all must be improved.
Allscripts CEO Paul Black, however, said the Department of Health and Human Services should stay the course with the rollout of Stage 3, noting that 2018 is a long way away.
Reposted from the FierceEMR website.
