President Obama wanted all healthcare records to be electronic by 2014, but that didn’t work out and a maligned federal program doesn’t appear to be helping.
Doctors are “terrified” of losing Medicare payments for not properly implementing electronic health records, senators complained Wednesday. The “meaningful use” program offers a vivid picture into why electronic health records haven’t proliferated as planned.
The program started in 2011 and gave doctors and hospitals money for setting up electronic records. Starting this year, eligible medical professionals will see their Medicare payments cut if they aren’t using records.
The cuts started this year at 1 percent and increase each year thereafter to a maximum of 5 percent.
But doctors haven’t been implementing the program because it is so complex, and now they worry about losing Medicare payments, said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., during a hearing Wednesday.
“This year, 257,000 physicians have already begun losing 1 percent of their Medicare reimbursements and 200 hospitals may be losing even more than that,” said Alexander, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Meaningful use is adopted in stages, and currently doctors and hospitals are in stage two.
The stage’s requirements, which include allowing patients to view and download records, are too complex to meet, Alexander said. Stage three, set to begin in 2018, is even more complex.
In addition, the financial incentives, of which $30 billion have been distributed, haven’t been helping, according to several surveys.
A 2014 survey of nearly 1,000 physicians from the news service Medical Economics found that nearly 70 percent didn’t believe their record system has been worth it.
To improve the program, the federal government needs to dole out more advice on implementing systems and give healthcare professionals more time to do so, said Dr. Thomas Payne, medical director of IT services at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine.
“Slow down regulation to accelerate progress,” he said in written testimony.
