With over one quarter of the House of representatives and many members of major medical associations on board, is it time to take a different approach to the push for a delay on meaningful use stage 3?
There is very little to show for the government's $30 billion investment in interoperable EHR technology, according to John Graham, a financial analyst and senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis. The imposition of federal regulations on EHRs and physician use has done more to hurt the interoperability that will foster widespread MU attestation than help it, he argues.
"[A]lthough the carrots dangled to induce EHR adoption have been eaten, the sticks have just begun to swing," Mr. Graham wrote in a column for Forbes. "Medicare and Medicaid will now punish physicians financially for failing to comply with MU. Even under the more lenient MU2 rule, 257,000 providers are already getting pay cuts. Many more will fail MU3."