







In a world where Information Technology has changed our lives for the better, healthcare continues to lag behind. Complex software systems promise streamlined workflows and better patient charts, but consistently fail to deliver. Physicians nationwide are now seeing less patients than ever, and healthcare costs are STILL skyrocketing. Rather than practicing their profession as healers, doctors are being relegated to the position of data entry clerks to satisfy the unreasonable regulations placed upon them by the US Government and Congress. This wastes over $35 billion dollars - that’s $1.3 million dollars a day since 2010! With the entry of Tom Price, Secretary of Health and Human Services, it’s time to reconsider the effects of Meaningful Use and decide if this is what the future of medicine should look like.

The story begins in 2004, when President George W. Bush ordered the execution of Executive Order 13335. This Order created The Office of the National Coordinator for Health and Information Technology (ONC). President Bush tasked the ONC with creating a national infrastructure to reduce medical errors, patient costs, and develop an international strategy to implement interoperable health information technology systems throughout the United States.

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act), created in 2009 was designed to stimulate the adoption of electronic health records (EHR) and supporting technology in the United States. President Obama signed HITECH into law on Feb. 17, 2009, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) economic stimulus bill. When Congress passed the $840 billion stimulus package, it allotted $30 billion for ONC to help America to digitize medical records, develop standards of practice and also penalize physicians and hospitals for not using electronic medical record systems. The Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) also got involved in the new program, often referred to as Meaningful Use. Meaningful Use is changing to a new value-based reimbursement system under a law passed by Congress in 2015 called MACRA, the Medicare Access, and CHIP, Children's Health Insurance Plan, Reauthorization Act.

The Meaningful Use as designed by the ONC were deeply flawed and hurt physicians across the country. The level of accountability for the ONC on this investment has been non-existent. The Rand 2 report in 2010 suggest that the ONC missguided the whole nation. Despite spending billions of dollars and creating hundreds of new regulations for physicians, the ONC has been unable to show any significant improvement in healthcare quality or cost. Since the implementation of ONC Directives: Meaningful Use of EMR by physicians and hospitals, the ONC has wasted 1 million dollars a day without any meaningful results or outcomes. This must be stopped if the American healthcare is to survive.

On December 8, 2010, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) released a landmark report designed to make recommendations on how America’s healthcare industry could reduce costs via information technology. The report called for a “universal language” so that healthcare providers could share information on a patient between multiple doctors, without replacing existing EHR systems. Unfortunately, despite massive public support from doctors and patients alike, the recommendations made by PCAST have been ignored by the ONC. This not only hurt the healthcare market, but also the American economy.

What have physicians gotten for their trouble? Their job has been reduced to data entry instead of the kind of work they trained for: taking care of the sick. According to a 2010 Rand Corporation report on EMR/EHR proliferation, the ONC has spent $35 Billion on Meaningful Use, yet it has failed to produce any significant results.

With the introduction of a new President and Cabinet, especially Dr. Tom Price, head of the Health and Human Services Department and Dr. Don Rucker, the new Chief of the ONC the time is ripe for change. A critical reexamination of the Meaningful Use requirements is necessary, to judge if they are an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars, and how exactly they are benefitting American patients. In the CMS’s 2017 Budget Justification, the office used statistics from as far back as 2013 and 2014 in an attempt to cover up their failure to implement the Meaningful Care program.

To provide some context regarding meaningful use of EMR and the kind of misery it has brought physicians, here’s a quote from Dr. John Halamka of Beth Israel Deaconess Health System in Boston, “I'm an emergency physician. The emergency physicians of Beth Israel Deaconess used to see 2.5 patients per hour because of the burden of electronic health record data entry.” In order to optimize physician time, they have to hire a new breed of data entry staff, called scribes, resulting in a substantial increase in cost.

One of the main problems with EMR and EHR implementation is that individual systems are not compatible with each other. Healthcare giants like EPIC, Cerner and Kareo have little reason to let go of what they see as “proprietary data”.

Instead of incentivizing physicians, the CMS should pivot and incentivize the people the files matter to most: the patients. If patients are given the tools to take ownership of their files, both physicians and EMR/EHR developers are forced to cooperate or lose a valuable source of income. Patients have always demonstrated a great deal of interest in keeping their medical records private and away from prying eyes, especially given the frequency of highly personal data used for medical filing, such as a social security number.

If the power is returned to the patient, doctors can get back to doing what they love to do, giving patients the best quality of care possible for an affordable price, without incurring massive fines from the government. Let us take the failures of Meaningful Use and build upon it, creating a system that empowers both patients and doctors, while allowing EMR/EHR developers the opportunities to grow and accommodate the rapidly changing needs of healthcare in America.

This wasteful policy continues to agonize physicians who must learn MIPS and MACRA to avoid a significant cut to their livelihood. There is no proof that going this route will do anything for patient health care or reduce increase healthcare cost in US.

It is time for all physicians to get involved and inform their Congressional representative to make the right decision and keep their physician’s and patient’s best interests in mind. Do they want physicians working with patients telling them they’re going to be ok or spending their time typing behind a desk while their patients languish away in bed? Active, hard working physicians need to dictate the requirements of EMR systems like Meaningful Use, not hospital administrators and bureaucrats focused on the bottom line.

We call on Dr. Tom Price and Dr. Don Rucker to lead the HHS and the US Congress to a future where US healthcare enables physicians to get back to healing and empower patients to control their own medical records. It’s time for all Americans and physicians nationwide to join the conversation and march on Capitol Hill in Washington.

If you'd like to receive more articles like this, please register here: https://goo.gl/forms/UEQRdW9GNiN6lVVt2. Your Daily Doc Newsletter will be chock full of Healthcare information and other great articles!





For more information I suggest this Round-table Discussion by a number of healthcare leaders from around the country on Modern Health's Website: http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20170401/MAGAZINE/304019951/chief-information-officers-roundtable-the-challenges-are-getting







