Six U.S. senators from the Republican Party believe that the "meaningful use" (MU) federal financial incentive program promoting electronic health record (EHR) adoption needs to be recalibrated to be effective.
Sen. John Thune (R-SD) and colleagues published a detailed 27-page white paper, titled "Reboot: Re-Examining the Strategies Needed to Successfully Adopt Health IT," this week describing what they called deficiencies of the program.
The report identifies five key implementation deficiencies, including:
- Lack of a clear path toward interoperability
- Increased costs for U.S. healthcare instead of cost savings
- Lack of oversight by the Obama administration to prevent waste and fraud in healthcare IT programs
- Risk of patient privacy and security violations because of lax security policies and procedures at the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)
- No plan for program sustainability after initial funds run out
The other authors of the white paper include Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Richard Burr (R-NC), Tom Coburn (R-OK), and Mike Enzi (R-WY). The white paper may be accessed here.
