A coalition of medical societies including the American Medical Association (AMA) has asked the U.S. government to put on hiatus its meaningful use (MU) program for promoting the adoption of healthcare IT.
In a September 17 statement, AMA said that it and 41 other medical societies were asking the Obama administration to pause the final stages of the meaningful use program because they believe that locking in stage 3 rules for MU "would be an unwise step that undermines the implementation of Medicare payment reforms."
The letter states that the proposed stage 3 rules were developed prior to the changes enacted by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), which introduced new payment systems based on quality and merit-based payment incentives.
"Proceeding with the proposed stage 3 rules threatens to impede the healthcare delivery innovations Congress sought to promote when it passed the law," the statement reads.
Moving ahead with electronic health record (EHR) systems that perform poorly and don't facilitate easy exchange of healthcare data would undermine the ability of health systems to implement the payment reforms found in MACRA, according to the statement. AMA further said it does not believe that pausing to reassess stage 3 meaningful use would stop or delay progress with EHRs.
