MU Incentive Program Called ‘Experiment' By Experts
By Greg Bengel, contributing writer
Government expert calls HIT initiatives ‘experiment’ as provider expert coincidently observes ‘we can’t afford to experiment’
At the recent CMS eHealth Summit in Baltimore, a panel of providers and stakeholders were united in the opinion that the Meaningful Use incentive program and data sharing need strict, unambiguous standards on interoperability from the government. Providers were adamant that there is no room for experimentation in this arena. Unfortunately, testimony from Hunt Blair, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) principal advisor for state HIT-enabled care transformation, predicts that experimentation is exactly what providers are going to get.
According to a FierceEMR article on the Summit, providers are worried that many standards are currently “semi-optional.” They feel that without mandatory, strict standards, providers and vendors will be unsuccessful with their interoperability efforts.
The article quotes panelist Ryan Bosch, chief medical information officer at Falls Church. “We can’t use the data unless it comes as a standard,” he said. “It’s like bottled water. If it’s in a Tupperware, unlabeled, at your feet, you won’t drink it. You don’t trust it.” Also quoted is panelist Indranil Ganguly, vice president and CIO at CentraState Medical Center. Ganguly told the Summit, “We can’t afford to experiment… the people, resources aren’t there.”
Meanwhile, ONC says that an “experiment” is precisely what is underway. In a Government Health IT article titled, “ONC’s Blair says public-private HIE ‘incredibly disruptive,’” Blair even uses that specific word to describe the initiative. “This is a big experiment we’re conducting,” he said at the same Summit. “And we’re going to get negative results. That’s what happens in an experiment.”
The Government Health IT article elaborates for Blair. “His point,” the article reads, “was that meaningful use, health information exchange, value-based payments and care delivery redesign — all part of the federal government’s health reform endeavor — are challenging, with varying results so far across the states and localities.”
As healthcare is the last industry outside of the government to move to interoperable data exchanges, Blair admits, “This is incredibly disruptive to basically the traditional model of medicine.” However, the article points out, it is inevitable that both providers and payers will have to share their data. According to Blair, “You can’t do the kind of value-based payments we want to do without provider and payer attribution.”