CHIME Comments on Meaningful Use

ANN ARBOR, MI - The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) submitted today a response to the Office of the National Coordinator’s HIT Policy Committee’s definition of meaningful use.


Addressed to National Coordinator for Healthcare Information Technology Dr. David Blumenthal, the letter is meant to help guide the refinement of the definition of meaningful use to achieve the objective of more effective and efficient delivery of care.

“It is our understanding that the goal of incentives for meaningful use is to encourage more providers to get in the game rather than merely rewarding the early adopters. To this end, the bar should be set accordingly. Further, given the diversity of (hospital) environments … flexibility in complying with meaningful use is essential to ensure that as many patients as possible reap the benefits of safer, more effective health IT-enabled care,” CHIME President and CEO Rich Correll wrote.


Some concerns and recommendations include:

Sequencing: CHIME recommends identifying a total number of required functions as the final goal and permitting flexibility in sequencing these functions for each milestone year.

CPOE: “CPOE for all order types” implies an extremely high bar that only a few of the nation’s hospitals may be in a position to meet.

Exchange of Clinical Information: A clear definition of what is meant by “… exchange health information …” is needed to understand this recommendation.

Inpatient vs. Outpatient: The Matrix does not clearly distinguish between criteria for hospitals and physician offices. “OP” and “IP” abbreviations do not effectively address our concerns.

Privacy: We believe HIPAA regulations should not be part of the criteria. The current laws already require adherence to standards and have associated penalties for those parties who do not comply. Further punishment will not help promote the overall goals of HITECH.

PHRs: Mature use of the PHR requires that communities address a wide range of issues, particularly those associated with privacy, security, and confidentiality. Their use and acceptance varies considerably across the country. Moreover, hospitals are not in a position to mandate or force use of a PHR. For these reasons, we recommend that PHR Measures be deferred to a later time.

Vendors: Meaningful use depends on the ability of a vendor and often multiple vendors’ ability to respond to their customers’ needs. Concerns include: adequate staffing to implement and support a much higher customer demand; system design to meet reporting requirements without rework; capability of products to exchange CCD; and development workload essential to make products compatible with associated stimulus requirements and ICD-10 adoption.

CHIME is committed to working with ONC and has offered to survey members regarding up-to-date progress in adoption while fostering a dialog on identified issues and problem solving toward developing HITECH implementation solutions.

The entire letter and recommendations can be found at Letter and Recommendations.


About CHIME
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) was formed with the dual objectives of serving the professional development needs of healthcare CIOs and advocating the more effective use of information management within healthcare. CHIME's events and activities were designed to reflect that purpose, including CIO-oriented surveys, education programs, and networking activities. With membership of more than 1,300 CIOs, CHIME has established itself as the premier organization serving the needs of healthcare CIOs. CHIME's educational initiatives are supported by the CHIME Foundation, a group of 69 providers of healthcare IS products and services. To learn more about CHIME and the CHIME Foundation, see www.cio-chime.org.



Contact:
Katie Weitkamp
Communications Coordinator, CHIME
(734) 665-000
kweitkamp@cio-chime.org
www.cio-chime.org

UPDATED: 6/29/2009 8:25:09 AM