The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) www.help.senate.gov recently held a hearing to explore how Congress and the Administration can improve EHRs either through legislation or administrative action.
The hearing focused largely on what healthcare providers need to make EHRs easier to adopt and work more effectively. This may mean adjusting the “Meaningful Use” requirement that providers must meet to receive federal EHR incentive payments so networks can more easily share information.
Meryl Moss, Chief Operating Officer at Coastal Medical in Providence in Rhode Island www.coastalmedical.com was invited to testify by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) www.whitehouse.senate.gov a member of the committee.
Moss presented several suggestions including harmonizing the various quality measures that providers are required to meet. The government uses one set of measures for CMS ACOs and a different set for Meaningful Use. Insurers require different quality targets which are ever-changing. The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) www.ncqa,org also requires different measures as well and as a result, many of the measures overlap.
In 2009, Senator Whitehouse helped secure new investments for HIT through ARRA including a provision to establish a Regional Extension Center Program to support the adoption of EHRs. The Rhode Island Quality Institute www.riqi.org received more than $6 million through the program along with additional funding from two other ARRA health IT programs. Rhode Island was the only state to receive all three ARRA HIT grants and is now recognized as a national leader in the adoption of EHRs.