It was a pleasure to work with you, as you and your team made this process a more pleasant experience for our team and the participants.
Karen Perry
A recent opinion piece and blog post take different positions on the overall success and potential effects of the meaningful use program.
Under the 2009 economic stimulus package, providers who demonstrate meaningful use of certified electronic health records can qualify for Medicaid and Medicare incentive payments.
Charles Krauthammer in a Washington Post opinion piece argues that the federal government's EHR "mandate" has "degraded medicine" and has even driven some physicians to leave the profession.
Krauthammer -- a former health care provider -- writes that the Obama administration's 2009 promise that EHRs would save $77 billion per year "became a joke," and the $27 billion that was allocated for the transition "is gone." Moreover, he adds that a 2014 HHS Office of Inspector General report found that "'EHR technology can make it easier to commit fraud,' as in Medicare fraud."
Krauthammer cites a former medical school classmate who wrote in their school's 40th reunion report that adopting EHRs at his office has meant that he "can only see about three-quarters of the patients [he] could before, and has prompted [him] to seriously consider leaving for the first time."
Krauthammer also cites an American Journal of Emergency Medicine study that found emergency department physicians "spend 43% of their time entering electronic records information, 28% with patients" and a JAMA Internal Medicine study that showed "family-practice physicians spend on average 48 minutes a day just entering clinical data."
Krauthammer adds, "That's just the beginning of the losses. Consider the myriad small practices ... facing ruinous transition costs in equipment, software, training and time, have closed shop, gone bankrupt or been swallowed by some larger entity." In addition, he notes, that providers who had not adopted EHRs by January will receive lower Medicare payments.
Krauthammer concludes that while "many ... feasted" on the initial investment in the government's push to adopt EHRs, "the rest is waste: money squandered, patients neglected, good physicians demoralized" (Krauthammer, Washington Post, 5/28).
In response to Krauthammer's piece, Tom Leary, vice president of government relations for the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, in a blog post writes that while the "[c]hallenges" to EHR adoption "are still evident ... the meaningful use program is lining up to have a long-term positive impact on health care delivery in the U.S."
He notes that Krauthammer's "implication that digitizing patient records has been anything but a bipartisan imperative for the country fails to acknowledge health IT as a critical tool for supporting health care transformation by improving quality and controlling the cost of care delivery." He adds that the "march to meaningful use" started in January 2004 when then President George W. Bush (R) "declared that most Americans would have access to their electronic health record within 10 years."
Leary also highlights the benefits of health IT, noting that investments in the area "will ensure better quality data are available to providers, so they can make informed decisions about the right patient at the right time."
Leary points to recent data from HIMSS Analytics that suggests "over 70% of hospitals have made positive progress in the advancement of their EHR capabilities over the last five years, and over 60% of ambulatory facilities have shown positive progress in just the last three years." He also cites examples of "smaller practices using health IT solutions to make positive change for their patients," such as Fremont Family Care, which saw the number of patients who needed hospitalization for pneumonia drop by half after it implemented an EHR system.
Leary acknowledges that there is still "work to do," in terms of health information exchange and meaningful use of health IT. However, he concludes, "We know IT improves health, and we will continue to educate the public on its benefits" (Leary, HIMSS blog post, 6/3).
It was a pleasure to work with you, as you and your team made this process a more pleasant experience for our team and the participants.
I just want to tell you that I value people relations more than money. I remember how you were friendly and helpful not going against policies and contractual obligations at the same time, not using your power to make us feel stupid and small. It was a very rare and big experience for me. Really. I will always remember this.
The Usability People are all individuals that you can become friends with very easily. They have a lot of different interests and are a pleasure to work with. I was writing a PRD/MRD for a billing solution and worked with The Usability People in defining the user interface. They are receptive to ideas and are able to mold the user interface from an end-user's perspective. I really liked the idea of putting end-user photograph & short biography around the office to help understand the users