Dear Leader McConnell and Senator Reid:
On behalf of the undersigned state and national medical specialty organizations, we are writing
to express our strong concerns with the decision by the Administration to move ahead with
implementation of Stage 3 of the Meaningful Use program despite the widespread failure of
Stage 2. While the overall goal established by Congress in the HITECH Act, namely to promote
widespread adoption of electronic health records by physicians and hospitals, has largely been
achieved, the Stage 3 requirements are inconsistent with the goal of promoting better coordinated
and high-quality patient care. Congressional action to refocus this program is urgently needed
before physicians, frustrated by the near impossibility of compliance with meaningless and ill informed bureaucratic requirements, abandon the program completely.
Congress enacted the HITECH Act with the best of intentions and, in large part, the goals of the
law have been achieved. In 2001, only 18% of physicians used electronic health records. Today,
more than 80% have them. This was due in part to federal incentives, which helped to offset a
portion of the cost of acquiring and operating the technology. However, as the regulatory
scheme to measure “meaningful use” of this technology has evolved, the Centers for Medicare &
Medicaid Services (CMS) has continued to layer requirement on top of requirement, usually
without any real understanding of the way health care is delivered at the exam room level. What
has emerged from this morass of regulation is a system that relegates physicians to the role of
data entry clerks, filling the patient record with unnecessary documentation requirements
unrelated to the provision of quality care. In addition, the program has failed to focus on
interoperability and has instead created new barriers to easily exchanging data and information
across care settings.
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