CMS has released data showing increased provider usage of EHRs, but at least one healthcare professional claims providers “go through the motions” for incentive payments.
In a recent press release, CMS “released new data that demonstrate that doctors and hospitals are using electronic health records (EHRs) to provide more information securely to patients and are using that information to help manage their patients’ care.” Specifically, CMS reports approximately 80 percent of eligible hospitals and more than 50 percent of eligible professionals have adopted EHRs and received Meaningful Use incentive payments from Medicare or Medicaid.
“By meaningfully using EHRs,” says CMS, “doctors and other healthcare providers prove they have been able to increase efficiency while safeguarding privacy and improving care for millions of patients nationwide.” While there has been much speculation about the potential for EHRs to improve care, CMS points to the following data as hard evidence:
- Doctors, physician’s assistants, and other providers have sent out more than 190 million electronic prescriptions.
- Healthcare professionals have sent 4.6 million patients electronic copies of their health information.
- Providers have also sent more than 13 million reminders about appointments, required tests or check-ups.
- Providers have checked drug and medication interactions through EHRs more than 40 million times.
- Providers have shared more than 4.3 million care summaries with other providers when patients moved between care settings.
PhysBizTech quotes CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner, in a press statement announcing the findings, as saying, “Electronic health records are transforming relationships between patients and their health care providers. EHRs improve care coordination, reduce duplicative tests and procedures, help patients take more control of their health, and result in better overall health outcomes.” Also quoted is National Health IT coordinator Farzad Mostashari, MD, who said, “These data show that healthcare professionals are not only adopting electronic health records rapidly, they’re also using them to improve care.”
While quantifying EHR usage is certainly exciting, not everyone is convinced that providers are actually using them as Mostashari says. An article from Information Week Healthcare titled “High EHR Usage: Driven By Need Or Regulations?” offers some interesting skepticism from Michelle Holmes, a principal at ECG Management Consultants in Seattle.
“It’s not to say that those benefits aren’t real,” Holmes said. “But there are a lot of examples of people going through the motions to get their numbers high enough to meet the minimum thresholds so they can participate in the [EHR] incentive programs. So they’re not doing [Meaningful Use] in a way that’s going to necessarily lead to these results.”
Holmes provides examples, explained at length in the article. One point she makes, referencing the requirement that hospitals share clinical summaries with at least 50 percent of patients after each visit, is that the patients do not actually get any value out of those documents, which more often than not get tossed in the trash in the clinic waiting rooms. In reference to the checking of drug interactions, she remarks, “All you have to do is have that feature turned on. You can have your providers override every single one of those alerts, but as long as the system is enabled to do that function in the reporting period, you meet that measure.” Source
