After Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, called for a suspension of the meaningful use incentive program during a committee hearing, representatives from CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology testified to the program's necessity.
Sen. Hatch, citing varying abilities of healthcare providers to implement electronic health records and changing meaningful use requirements, suggested the incentive program be suspended and reevaluated: "It would seem to me that we have an opportunity to push the pause button and make sure that the program is working before we continue down a potentially unsustainable path," he said in a statement.
Farzad Mostashari, MD, the national coordinator for health information technology, defended the program in his testimony: "At HHS, we believe these meaningful use objectives are strongly aligned with other policy drivers to help our healthcare system to become safer and more efficient, and achieve higher quality.
"Analyses of nationally representative surveys of office-based physicians and non-federal acute-care hospitals show that there has been strong and steady growth in both physician and hospital adoption of EHR technology to meet meaningful use objectives to improve quality, safety and efficiency. For example, computerized provider order entry for medication orders, which is a meaningful use requirement, has been shown to cut out nearly half of medication errors."
Patrick Conway, MD, the CMO and director of the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality at CMS, also touted the benefits of incentivizing hospitals to achieve meaningful use, saying reaching the benchmarks helps hospitals to "improve quality, safety, efficiency and reduce health disparities; engage patients and families; improve care coordination, population and public health; and maintain the privacy and security of patient health information" in his testimony.
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