Consumers urged to Contribute to ‘Meaningful use’ Definition

Do providers think consumers/patients will mess up the EHR adoption process?

As if the process were not complicated enough, the committee that advises the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is making that extra effort to involve patients, also known as ‘consumers’ of health care – and their families in the development of the definition of ‘meaningful use’ in regs to be issued under HITECH.

Read on to discover why consumer groups think it is the doctors who are mucking up the process.

The Health Information Technology Policy Committee (HITPC) is conducting a hearing on April 20, 2010 in Washington, DC to specifically address “the patient/family engagement domain in stages 2 and 3 of the development of the MU definition. It’s one of a series of public hearings, according to HITPC MU Workgroup, over the next few months that will focus on informing its recommendations for Stages 2 and 3 MU definitions.

Recall that CMS and ONC are developing the rules that define meaningful use in stages. The first stage was announced in December last year. In CMS’s proposed rule, several objectives were announced that the HITPC MU workgroup has taken to mean “let the people speak!”

Consumers’ timely copy of, and access to, electronic records

After-care summary for every outpatient encounter

Discharge summary for every hospital stay

Patient reminders for preventive & follow-up care

According to the Health Care Blog, the head of the MU program at ONC has been key in making the consumer such a big part of phase 1 of the meaningful use criteria, and reminds its readers that you can be assured that there’re lots of people wanting to put the brakes on any expansion of the consumer-facing meaningful use criteria.”

According to a new post on the e-patients blog, an online space developed by the Society for Participatory Medicine, its bloggers intend to attend the hearing and ask about the role of patient-generated data and how it can be integrated into EHRS and the clinicians’ workflow to boost care management. They also want to know about the ‘role of the patient in ensuring data in EHRs is spot on.”

These look like good questions. So who wants to keep consumers/patients out of this process, and why?

Perhaps physicians as they fear patients do not really understand the complications inherent in adopting EHR.

Another group that represents consumers, labor unions and employers in the EHR policy debate seem to point out that providers are the killjoys here. The Consumer Partnership for eHealth (CPeH), is busy answering the complaints of providers about things like the speedy timeframe for EHR adoption, small practices’ lack of resources, and unreimbursed time/expense for EHR adoption.

This group, interestingly, concludes its list with the argument that “the meaningful use of incentive program is voluntary” and also notes that the incentive payments are not an entitlement and there’s no need to participate.” This is true only till the year 2015, at which point the incentive money turns into a penalty if a provider is not compliant with the MU rule.