Hospitals are absolutely “terrified” at the prospect of meeting new federal regulations for using electronic health records, said a prominent senator who wants to delay the regulations.
The federal government has sunk more than $30 billion to get doctors and hospitals to adopt electronic records since 2009. But providers are still having trouble implementing the systems and new regulations are set to go into effect next year.
Doctors and hospitals should have until 2017 to implement the last stage of the meaningful use program, which doles out money to hospitals and doctors for adopting health information technology, said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which held a hearing on health IT Wednesday.
The meaningful use program was implemented in 2009 as part of President Obama’s economic stimulus package. It has three stages in which doctors and hospitals increasingly adopt and incorporate electronic records into their everyday practices.
During each step, doctors and hospitals that prove they have adopted the systems receive financial incentives of up to about $60,000.
The program’s second stage went into effect in 2014. To get the incentives, a provider has to show he met objectives such as electronically messaging patients and tracking medications electronically.
The third and final stage in the program requires providers to use electronic records to improve health outcomes.
For instance, one of the objectives is to use health IT to help determine the cost effectiveness and appropriateness of lab and radiology orders.
While the U.S. healthcare system needs to move toward an interoperable, electronic system, it “doesn’t help patients to make these massive changes fast and wrong,” Alexander said. “It does help patients to do this deliberately and correctly.”
Alexander not only wants the stage 3 requirements to go into effect in 2017, but he also wants them phased in for a doctors’ practice or hospital based on how successfully the program has been implemented.
“Some hospitals told me they are terrified by the prospect of stage 3,” he said. “These are the finest medical centers in the U.S.”
