Posted by John Moore

Despite the pending $36.3 billion that the U.S. government plans to spend over the next several years to drive physician adoption of electronic health record software, the market is at a standstill.

Why?

It’s really quite simple and logical. That $36.3 billion targeted for EHR adoption was part of the massive stimulus package signed by President Obama in early 2009. Within that package, was the $36.3 billion for the “meaningful use of certified EHRs.” Funny thing, though, no one was quite sure what “meaningful use” meant or what a “certified EHR” was. Defining those terms was left to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Healthcare IT (ONC).

Physicians may receive as much as $48,000 in reimbursement under Medicare (hospitals may see up to $11 million) for meaningful use of certified EHRs. However, without a clear understanding of what was expected under meaningful use, let alone what a certified EHR really is, physicians and hospital CIOs have wisely waited for a clear signal from the administration and the ONC.

Aware that the market was at a standstill, ONC and its Meaningful Use Workgroup, worked feverishly to deliver recommendations. The first draft came out in mid-June and met much resistance. The workgroup was sent back to the drawing board, facing an extremely tight ten-day public comment period. On July 16th, it released a second draft, incorporating comments and concerns. This draft was adopted, and now, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will take these recommendations and turn them into rules and methods of verification.

In a nutshell, here are the five broad categories laid out by the workgroup that physicians and hospital CIOs will need to consider:

1. Improve quality, safety, efficiency and reduce health disparities.
2. Engage patients and families.
3. Improve care coordination.
4. Improve population and public health.
5. Insure adequate privacy and security protections for personal health information.

Within each category, the workgroup set specific objectives and measures in a matrix, ratcheting up requirements every two years. In 2011, which is adoption year one, the broad objective is to capture and share data. For 2013, adoption year two, meaningful use is to advance care processes with decision support. In 2015, adoption year three, meaningful use criteria focus on improving outcomes.

The use “adoption years” was one of the newest revisions. This approach lowers the burden for providers, letting them incrementally adopt an EHR and change process workflow overtime rather than having to jump in, say, in 2013 and be required to adopt all meaningful use criteria for the year.

At 10 pages, the meaningful use matrix sets some fairly high goals. Clearly, the federal government wants to ensure that it gets its money worth from the significant amount of tax dollars that will be pumped into the healthcare IT market. The real question, though, is have the goals been set too high?

As mentioned previously, the total amount of possible reimbursement for hospitals is roughly $11 million. Yes, that’s a lot, especially for a small hospital, but the potential future penalties are an even bigger issue for most hospitals. (CMS payment penalties, begin at 1% in 2016 and potentially ratcheting up to 5% five years later.) Thus, we’re likely to see virtually all hospitals attempt to meet the meaningful use criteria.

Small physician practices, where some 75% of all healthcare occurs, is another story. These practices are often family-run operations with modest IT skills. In such small practices, adoption of EHRs has been anemic (a recent New England Journal of Medicine article pegged adoption at some 4%). In these small practices, EHRs have yet to prove themselves as a benefit and are often seen as a serious detriment to delivering efficient care.

With EHRs already viewed as suspect by this sector, will adding on the burden of meeting meaningful use criteria and creating reports to verify compliance justify the upfront costs a physician will have to pay in expectation of future reimbursement from CMS? Not likely. Even the penalties with which CMS can threaten a small practice are likely to backfire, as many practices will simply stop seeing Medicare or Medicaid patients.

To drive EHR adoption among small practices, burdensome criteria tied to reimbursement won’t succeed. New incentives are necessary, and, more important, healthcare IT adoption can’t occur in a vacuum without broader payment reform. As long as physicians are paid by the visit, they’ll optimize their practices for higher patient throughput. Technology that hinders throughput won’t be adopted.

Maybe the trick to encouraging adoption of EHRs that will be meaningfully used by physicians in support of broader healthcare improvement goals rests within a policy framework that pays for healthy citizens. Or maybe EHR vendors need to simply create software that helps physicians be more profitable.

Above article published on

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/08/has_government.html;jsessionid=FUP3WJ12DLKRHQE1GHRSKHWATMY32JVN

By Mary Mosquera

The Obama administration is expected to announce as early as Friday plans to award a series of grants to assist healthcare providers acquire and use health IT properly as well as to help states set up health information exchanges.

National health IT coordinator Dr. David Blumenthal is scheduled to join Vice President Joe Biden and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Aug. 20 for a discussion with physicians, nurses and administrators from Chicago’s Mt. Sinai Hospital. They are expected to discuss health reform, including health IT infrastructure and preventative care, according to a White House statement.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided the Office of the National Coordinator $2 billion to promote the meaningful use of health IT. Up to $300 million was intended to help establish state HIEs; another share would fund regional training centers to help physicians and hospitals incorporate health IT into their practices.

In an e-mailed statement today, Blumenthal laid out the administration’s case for the importance of the health IT funding targets.

Nationwide electronic HIE “provides the best opportunity for each patient to receive optimal care,” Blumenthal said. The technology will make patients’ complete medical information securely available to their health care providers where and when it is needed, “when clinician and patient are together facing medical decisions that can make a lasting difference.”

“My personal belief in this transformation is not based on theory or conjecture,” said Blumenthal, who has been a primary care physician for 30 years.

“I spent the first 20 shuffling papers in search of missing studies and frequently hoping, during middle-of-the-night emergencies, that I knew enough about patients’ medical histories to make good decisions. All that changed when I began to have access to patients’ electronic medical records,” he said, adding that it made him a better doctor. He started using electronic records 10 years ago.

With the U.S. spending $2.5 trillion annually on healthcare, it is clear that change is necessary, he said. “Better, faster, more reliable and efficient care also ultimately reduces system-wide costs,” he said.

To realize the benefits of a nationwide health information system will also require that personal health information remain private and secure. “Putting into place safeguards for the privacy and security of this information, when it is in electronic form, will be an ongoing priority that influences and guides all of our efforts,” he said.

Above article published on

http://www.govhealthit.com/newsitem.aspx?nid=71989

Experts say electronic health records will slash health care costs, but hospitals wonder when — and how — they’ll be able to realize those savings.

By David Goldman, CNNMoney.com staff writer

The health care industry is poised to realize huge savings by implementing electronic health records systems, but who really benefits is up for debate.

Digitizing health records is a big part of the Obama administration’s health reform agenda, with the president arguing that EHR will save taxpayers from wasteful spending by making health care more efficient.

But huge upfront costs and a questionable return on investment for hospitals have some screaming for broader reforms.

A recent Congressional Budget Office report said the health reform bills wouldn’t sufficiently rein in costs nor would they trickle down savings to the average American with employee-sponsored insurance.

But a separate report from the CBO said the Recovery Act program that provides incentives to implement electronic health records in hospitals nationwide would save the government more than $12 billion in Medicare and Medicaid costs over the next 10 years.

Though that doesn’t sound like much, considering American consumers, businesses and governments spent approximately $2 trillion on health care last year, other studies show the savings are potentially ten times that amount for the entire health care industry.

Still, that’s just part of the story. Making hospitals more efficient could actually hurt their bottom line. Insurance companies are willing to pay more for longer and more complicated patient treatments, so cutting down on costs may only be part of the solution.

How digital health saves costs. The first, most obvious cost saving comes from the time EHRs save just from turning them on.

Since patient information lives in a database, an electronic health record system means patients don’t need to take the time to explain medical history to new doctors. EHRs help doctors diagnose faster, significantly cut down on the time it takes hospital staff to chart patients’ information and ultimately slash the length of an average patient visit.

A recent study at the Christiana Care emergency room in Wilmington, Del., showed that just having the ability to download and print out a file with a patient’s medical history saved the ER $545 per use, mostly on reduced waiting times.

With payroll generally serving as the single largest hospital expense, the creation of a digital system means hospitals can use their staff more efficiently.

“Doctors are paid by the minute, and they don’t have a clue who the patients are,” said David St. Clair, chief executive of health tech company MEDecision, which conducted the Christiana Care study. “Anything the system can tell them makes workflow easier and faster.”

Beyond the ER, St. Clair estimated that EHR will result in total cost savings of $100 per patient per year. Sudhakar Ram, CEO of health IT firm Mastek, put that figure as high as $200 per patient per year. Mastek recently won a contract to create a central depository for health records for the UK’s National Health Service.

Applied industry-wide, total savings could range up to $100 billion over the next 10 years, according to research group RAND.

Further out, as hospitals fully implement EHR and begin to cut back on duplications, misdoses and medical errors, cost reduction could total as much as $50 billion a year, said Ram.

Cost savings don’t always mean more money. Those same cost reductions ultimately mean hospitals are getting less money.

The health-care system, as currently devised, allows savings for the health insurers, but not for those providing and receiving the care, said David Brailer, chairman of Health Evolution Partners and former health tech czar under President George W. Bush.

“We can influence care in a way that saves money, but we cannot tell you we’ll have a robust return on investment,” said Gail Donovan, chief operating officer for Continuum Health Partners, a New York network of 12 hospitals. Donovan said the network’s 10-year cost for health information technology is $100 million.

Electronic health records cost tens of millions of dollars upfront for a typical hospital to implement. They also take years to set up and hours to train physicians.

“I’m still shocked that there is a business argument for electronic medical records because it kills the very thing that makes hospitals money,” said Brailer. “The way we pay for health care penalizes efficiency.”

Solutions: charge more. St. Clair argues that hospitals that can prove they are saving money and time — and seeing more patients as a result — will be able to convince the insurance industry to pay more for hospitals’ services.

“If hospitals are able to demonstrate savings, they’ve got to charge more money to commercial insurers,” said St. Clair. “The insurers would be happy to do that, because they’re willing to improve the quality of care and don’t want to screw over the hospital in the process. That’s how hospitals will get more profits.”

But Brailer said that’s wishful thinking. He instead advocates for a “pay for performance” system, in which insurers pay hospitals a lot for a job well done and nothing for a bad job. That puts the burden on the hospitals to treat patients well and efficiently, rather than the current system in which hospitals can make more when patients stay sick.

“If we had that system, we wouldn’t need a stimulus plan for EHR, because every hospital would already have one to improve their results,” Brailer said. “Hospitals should be accountable for their results.”

Above article published on http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/21/technology/electronic_health_record_cost_savings/?postversion=2009082103

President Obama held a town hall meeting in New Hampshire today, Tuesday, August 11, in an effort to calm fears over the Democrats’ legislative initiatives to reform healthcare in this country. The meeting was structured, and no visible emotional outbursts were seen as in other meetings with lawmakers across the country.

Obama answered questions posed by attendees, emphatically telling the audience that the current healthcare system solely benefits the insurance industry. With 46 million in the country without health insurance, he tried to reassure his audience that they would be able to keep their current coverage and doctor and that the government would not be “in charge”. Obama hammered on the fact that the government and insurance bureaucrats should not be meddling, that pre-existing conditions will be covered and that insurance companies would not be able to drop or deny coverage or water down coverage. Many of the questions on voter’s minds that were expected to be answered, especially with respect to employers and small businesses, were not addressed.

Numerous recent polls show support for healthcare reform is eroding, and the President’s numbers are dropping as well over fears that a government takeover of our healthcare system in the U.S. will lead to a Canadian style system with long waits for treatments and referrals.

The President’s message today was supposed to address people who already have insurance through their employers and highlight how his proposals would affect them. HAI monitored the town hall meeting and didn’t find the retool of the White House message to have answered those questions. Another town hall meeting with Obama is scheduled for Bozeman, Montana on Friday, and on Saturday, Obama will be in Grand Junction, Colorado.

Meanwhile, the White House has opened a Reality Check website with a viral tool aimed at online healthcare combat on everything from rationing to euthanasia. The website incorporates lessons learned from the Obama presidential campaign, and shows the White House is becoming more aggressive in dispelling what they call misinformation in the healthcare debates.

The August Congressional Recess is not even half over, and Democratic lawmakers are very much at risk of losing control of the public debate over healthcare reform, facing wary constituents and facing a barrage of accusations and criticism over their writing of the legislation prior to leaving Washington. Powerful groups on both sides of the debate are using the August recess to hammer home to lawmakers that there are very serious political consequences to the healthcare issue.

Senators working on a yet to be released draft bill said earlier this week that President Obama would like to get something passed for healthcare reform and then start negotiating in a House-Senate conference committee. Some Democrats support the public option, but it will be a tough sell for Republicans if they want to get a bill through the Senate. The flashpoint in the debate has become the question of whether a healthcare overhaul should include a public option. As the debate rolls on, Americans are questioning what the shape and size of the government’s role in the economy should be, especially on the heels of Congress passing three massive economic stimulus bills.

Above article published on

http://www.rotor.com/Default.aspx?tabid=510&newsid905=61983

Diana Manos, Senior Editor

The State Alliance for e-Health issued new guidance on Tuesday for state health information exchanges.

The executive-level organization, composed of governors, state legislators, attorney generals and state commissioners, included information on how states can lead the way in using health IT as they begin instituting the federal Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act.

The HITECH Act, enacted as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, expands the role of states in fostering health information exchange and adoption of electronic health records over the next five years.

“Governors understand that swift and thoughtful action is needed at the state level to plan and implement a national system of health information exchange,” said Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, co-chairman of the alliance. “Widespread adoption and use of electronic health records provides a critical foundation for improving health outcomes and cost-effectiveness.”

The report recommends actions states should take now to qualify for the HITECH Act, including:

• Preparing or updating the state plan for HIE adoption;
• Engaging stakeholders;
• Establishing a state leadership office to manage the different phases of HIE implementation;
• Preparing state agencies to participate;
• Implementing privacy strategies and reforms;
• Determining the HIE business model;
• Creating a communications strategy; and
• Establishing opportunities for health IT training and education.

“States already have taken the lead in modernizing the healthcare system by advancing the use of health IT, electronic health records, e-prescribing and electronic exchange of health information,” said Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, NGA chairman and co-chairman of the alliance. “We now have an opportunity to accelerate adoption of health IT across the states and create a truly comprehensive healthcare system that is effective, affordable and accountable.”

The report and state initiatives to implement health IT and electronic HIE will provide a central focus for the alliance’s semi-annual conference, to be held Aug. 7 in Burlington, Vt.

The alliance – supported by funding from the Department of Health and Human Services – provides a nationwide forum through which governors, state policymakers and other stakeholders can work to identify effective HIT policies and best practices and explore solutions to challenges related to the exchange of health information.

Above article published on

http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/state-alliance-e-health-issues-hit-
exchange-guidance

DENIS STAUNTON in Washington

US PRESIDENT Barack Obama has promised to overhaul the American healthcare system by the end of this year – without Republican support if necessary.

Speaking in Indiana after a town hall meeting to promote his economic policies, the president said he would prefer to sign a bipartisan healthcare Bill but it was not yet clear if negotiations with Republicans would prove fruitful.

“Sometime in September we’re going to have to make an assessment,” he told MSNBC. “I promise you, we will pass reform by the end of this year because the American people need it.”

Mr Obama told his audience in Elkhart, which experienced the sharpest unemployment rise in the US last year, that he would issue $2.4 billion in taxpayer grants to create electric cars and tens of thousands of jobs.

“For too long, we failed to invest in this kind of innovative work, even as countries like China and Japan were racing ahead,” he said.

“That’s why this announcement is so important – this represents the largest investment in this kind of technology in American history.”

Mr Obama identified energy, innovation, healthcare and education as the pillars of the new US economy he wants to build from the wreckage of the recession.

“Now, there are a lot of people out there who are looking to defend the status quo. There are those who want to seek political advantage. They want to oppose these efforts.

“Some of them caused the problems that we got now in the first place, and then suddenly they’re blaming other folks for it. They don’t want to be constructive. They don’t want to be constructive; they just want to get in the usual political fights back and forth,” he said to applause.

“But you and I know the truth. We know that even in the hardest times, against the toughest odds, we have never surrendered. We don’t give up. We don’t surrender our fates to chance. We have always endured. We have worked hard, and we have fought for our future.

“Our parents had to fight for their future; our grandparents had to fight for their future. That’s the tradition of America.

“This country wasn’t built just by griping and complaining. It was built by hard work and taking risks. And that’s what we have to do today.”

Republicans, who have opposed all Mr Obama’s key proposals, from the economic stimulus package to healthcare reform, see in the president’s declining popularity an opportunity to make gains in next year’s congressional elections.

“President Obama is now looking like a mere mortal, as opposed to someone who previously exceeded gravity,” said John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

“I think there will be a significant number of voters who, leading up to 2010, will wonder if they voted for someone they didn’t get.”

Above article published on

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/0806/1224252080737.html

By JANE ZHANG

Federal health agencies, seeking to hand out stimulus funds to research the effectiveness of various medical treatments, said they will include projects that look in part at the cost of drugs and other treatments.

The approach — which was unveiled in a report to Congress this week by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Institutes of Health, both agencies under the Department of Health and Human Services — could provide more fodder to conservatives worried that the government might use the results of such studies to limit health care to consumers.

Administration officials have said they want to use stimulus funds to help doctors and patients choose more-effective treatments and ultimately, help rein in rising health-care costs. Democrats are considering including measures that would support such research as part of health-care legislation making its way through Congress.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which has $300 million to spend on comparative research, mostly in the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, said it would increase funding to projects that focus on arthritis, cancer and 12 other conditions that are often costly to treat.

“This is unprecedented investment in helping clinicians and patients identify what’s the best for them in treatment,” said Carolyn Clancy, the agency’s director, in an interview.

The NIH, which is earmarked to spend $400 million in comparative-treatment studies over two years, will fund projects that include cost as a factor in their studies, said Richard J. Hodes, director of the NIH’s National Institute on Aging.

The NIH has received 1,800 research applications, but hasn’t figured out how many fall under the definition of “comparative effectiveness research,” Dr. Hodes said. The agency will award the first grants in August.

The two agencies don’t set policy, but their work helped officials running government programs such as Medicare, the insurance program for the elderly and disabled, decide which treatments to cover. Nicholas Papas, an HHS spokesman, said under the stimulus law, Medicare can’t use the research to deny coverage to patients.

Above article published on

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124907957435498005.html

By Adriel Bettelheim

President Obama plans to huddle with his Cabinet and top advisers on Friday and Saturday to review lessons learned from his first six months in office. There’s bound to be some gnashing of teeth over the pace of the health care overhaul, and also some satisfaction over signs the economy is staggering back.

But based on his remarks at Wednesday’s town halls in Raleigh, N.C. and Bristol, Va., don’t expect a major recalibration of the administration’s message.

Obama continued to strenuously defend economic relief efforts launched in the aftermath of last fall’s financial crisis and lay some blame at the feet of former President George W. Bush. And he eagerly portrayed himself as a responsible steward of taxpayers’ money, to deflect persistent Republican charges that he’s incapable of controlling federal spending.

“I know that some critics in Washington think we’ve been slow to get these projects started,” Obama said in Raleigh, referring to work funded by the $787 billion economic stimulus package (PL 111-5). “They are saying we should have broken ground on all our highway projects on the first day. But everyone knows that’s impossible, especially because I wanted to be sure we did our homework and invested tax dollars only in those projects that actually created new jobs and jumpstarted our economy.”

Speaking in a state where the jobless rate is 11 percent, Obama said while there’s still much work left to be done to assure a complete recovery, “there is little debate that these steps, taken together, have helped stop our economic freefall.”

Obama also fired back at critics who blame him for running up the federal deficit, saying he inherited a $1.3 trillion shortfall. Without mentioning Bush by name, Obama said the staggering deficit was “a debt that is partially a result of two tax cuts that went primarily to the wealthiest few and a Medicare drug program, none of which was paid for.”

Finally, Obama continued to subtly recalibrate his health care message, casting the debate as one that revolves around curbing insurance companies’ less-savory business practices.

He outlined a series of consumer-protection measures aimed at preventing health plans from denying coverage to individuals who have preexisting medical conditions, dropping coverage for individuals who become seriously ill or charging unlimited out-of-pocket expenses. He also said the health overhaul would force the plans to pay for preventive care and routine checkups and remove arbitrary caps on the amount of coverage individuals can receive in a given year or in a lifetime.

Of course, many of these proposals aren’t major sticking points in the current debate. But talk about contentious stuff like public insurance options and how to pay for the overhaul should probably best be left to staff retreats and closed-door negotiating sessions on Capitol Hill.

Above article published on

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/balance_of_power/2009/07/
obama-defends-stimulus-health.html

By Matthew DoBias

President Barack Obama moved to stem growing criticism of his blueprint to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system, warning a national audience not to “become consumed in the game of politics” and underscoring the potential benefits everyday individuals could reap under a wholly reformed system.

In a news briefing that focused almost entirely on healthcare, the president tried to put the focus on the personal rather than the political.

“My hope is, and I’m confident that, when people look at the cost of doing nothing, they’re going to say, ‘We can make this happen. We’ve made big changes before that resulted in a better life for the American people,’” Obama said.

Over the past three weeks, Obama’s push to fundamentally change how care is provided and paid for has come under attack from a bloc of fiscally conservative Democrats, stalwart Republicans and both right- and left-leaning interest groups.

Longtime policy shapers have begun to tie the president’s upstart reform efforts to one that failed spectacularly in the early 1990s. Such comparisons could prove to be as damaging as any legislative setback or missed deadline.

The president reiterated a pledge not to support any new taxes that would hit the middle class. His steadfast opposition to a tax on health benefits has rankled some lawmakers who had hopes of using such a levy to help defray the expected $1 trillion overhaul price tag.

“If I see a proposal that is primarily funded through taxing middle-class families, I’m going to be opposed to it,” he said. But, he added that he’s open to other tax proposals now being hashed out by congressional leaders.

And Obama also backed a measure that would give the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission expanded powers to enact many of its payment recommendations with limited chances for Congress to alter such proposals

Above article published on http://www.modernhealthcare.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090722/
REG/307229963&AssignSessionID=173353830933946

Today, the Health IT Policy Committee approved a work group’s revised recommendations for defining “meaningful use” of electronic health records, Health Data Management reports.

The federal economic stimulus package requires hospitals and physicians to demonstrate meaningful use of EHRs to qualify for Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments.

The work group released its initial draft recommendations last month.

Revised Benchmarks

For the new recommendations, the work group revised objectives for EHRs to meet by certain deadlines. The revised 2011 criteria call for qualified health care providers to:

• Allow patients to access their health records in a timely manner;
• Develop capabilities to exchange health information where possible;
• Implement at least one clinical decision support rule for a specialty or clinical priority;
• Provide patients with electronic copies of discharge instructions and procedures;
• Submit insurance claims electronically; and
• Verify insurance eligibility electronically when possible.

The group also called for health care providers to allow all patients to access personal health records by 2013, two years earlier than under the initial recommendations.

In addition, the revised recommendations include an objective for all providers to participate in a national health data exchange by 2015.

Sliding Scale

For the new recommendations, the work group suggested that health care providers could meet the EHR adoption benchmarks on a shifted timeline.

For example, if a health care provider first started implementing health IT processes in 2012, the 2011 criteria would apply to the provider’s first adoption year. The 2013 criteria then would apply to the provider’s third adoption year.

CPOE

The work group also clarified criteria related to computerized physician order entry systems.

The new recommendations call for health care providers to use CPOE systems for 10% of all orders of any type.

However, the work group did not offer guidance on whether the 10% requirement would apply to each individual order type or all orders in total.

HIPAA

In addition, the new recommendations clarify how violations of the HIPAA medical privacy rule could affect incentive payments.

The work group recommended that CMS withhold incentive payments from health care providers until HIPAA violation charges are resolved.

Next Steps

The revised meaningful use recommendations now go to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and other HHS units.

HHS will use the recommendations to help shape regulations regarding the federal incentive programs.

The federal government is expected to release a proposed rule by the end of 2009 (Goedert, Health Data Management, 7/16).

Blumenthal Notes Progress on Health IT

In related news, National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal on Wednesday said HHS is moving forward on efforts to promote health IT adoption among medical providers nationwide.

Speaking during an event at the Center for American Progress, Blumenthal said ONC is prioritizing efforts to define meaningful use of EHRs.

Blumenthal said his office will publish a notice of proposed rulemaking on meaningful use within several months. Stakeholders then will have an opportunity to submit public comment before officials finalize the definition in early 2010, he added.

Coming Up

Next week, the Health IT Standards Committee will meet to discuss criteria for relating meaningful use to equipment and manufacturing decisions. HHS aims to release certification criteria by the end of the year, Blumenthal said.

Blumenthal added that ONC will unveil its plans for a health IT infrastructure this summer. He said the office also will release a blueprint for developing a health data exchange (Noyes, CongressDaily, 7/15).

Above article published on

http://www.ihealthbeat.org/Articles/2009/7/16/Health-IT-Policy-
Panel-Approves-Revisions-on-Meaningful-Use.aspx