A team of researchers, led by Deborah Cohen, PhD, examined survey responses from 1,492 practices across 12 states. The majority of practices had 10 or fewer clinicians and were located in urban and suburban areas. The most common EHRs used by the practices were Epic, eClinicalWorks and NextGen Healthcare.
To participate in CMS’ meaningful use and EHR Incentive Program, organizations are required to use a federally certified EHR technology and submit quality data aligned with national standards. However, the researchers found the reports generated by CERHT did not always support quality improvement initiatives and clinicians reported a number of challenges in generating reports. These challenges included “difficulty manipulating and aligning measurement time frames with quality improvement needs, [a] lack of functionality for generating reports on electronic clinical quality measures, [a] discordance between clinical guidelines and measures available in reports, questionable data quality and vendors that were unreceptive to changing EHR configuration beyond federal requirements,” the report reads.
“With federal value-based payment programs such as the Quality Payment Program poised to motivate clinicians to improve care quality, investment is needed to ensure that the health IT clinicians use delivers credible clinical quality data and has the functionality necessary to inform quality improvement efforts as well as external reporting for payment and other purposes without adding to an already high burden,” the study authors conclude.
Click here to read the full study.
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