Letter tells CMS to set more specific EHR goals

To successfully implement the broad use of electronic health records, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) needs to make its health goals and targets more explicit, according to public comments submitted by healthcare leaders from 56 organizations on the agency's meaningful-use rule.

The Markle Foundation, the Center for American Progress and the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at Brookings were the three organizations that coordinated these comments and submitted them to the CMS in response to several rules governing meaningful use and certification of EHRs. The rulemaking originated from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the stimulus law, which provided billions of dollars in federal subsidy payments to hospitals and office-based physicians for the purchase of EHR systems. HHS plans to administer the new subsidies beginning in 2011. The goal of meaningful use is to improve healthcare efficiency, safety and quality, not just to adopt EHRs, yet the rulemaking fails to establish a set of clear and measurable goals for achieving the quality metrics it proposes, healthcare leaders stated. Unless these goals are understood by the provider community, compliance with meaningful use will become more of an exercise to fulfill reporting requirements instead of an opportunity to use health IT to improve care, the groups warned.