Case For Dropping MU Stages 2 And 3

Federal meaningful use requirements are well intentioned, but like a teacher who “teaches to the test,” the federal meaningful use program created a very complicated system that might pass the test of meaningful use stages, but is not producing meaningful results for patients and clinicians.

As reported on April 14, 2014 in MedScape (free log-in required), a formal study published in the April 2014 issue ofJAMA Internal Medicine shows no correlation between quality of care and meaningful use adherence. This study validates what common sense has told many of us for the last few years.

Meaningful Use Stage 1 was a jump-start for EMR adoption in the industry. That’s a good thing, I suppose, although meaningful use also created a false market for mediocre products. It’s time to put an end to the federal meaningful use program, eliminate the costly administrative overhead of meaningful use, remove the government subsidies that also create perverse incentives, and let “survival of the fittest” play a bigger part in the process. Let the fruits of EMR utilization go to the organizations that commit, on their own and without government incentives, to maximizing the value of their EMR investments toward quality improvement, cost reduction, and clinical efficiency...