meaningful use

The Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has issued final safe-harbor regulations for payments and business practices related to electronic health records. Some of these payments and practices would otherwise implicate the federal anti-kickback statute. EHR Intelligence reports that federal regulators have extended the safe harbor until Dec. 31, 2021, with three goals: to incentivize the adoption of EHRs, align the date on which the safe harbor will sunset along with the ending of incentives for the meaningful use of such EHRs, and to provide protection against “'foreseeable future fraud risks.'”

The Concord Monitor reports that the "federal stimulus bill passed in 2008 contained billions of dollars in funding for medical providers to adopt electronic health records." The carrot: the financial incentives to adopt electronic health records. The stick: if healthcare providers do not achieve "meaningful use" in their electronic records, they face deductions from their Medicare payments.

However, some independent physician practices that do not have a lot of Medicare payments find "the incentives haven’t been big enough to justify the costs of meeting the high standards," The Monitor further reports.

Doctors find some benefits from electronic records but they also find the records to be "cumbersome, time-consuming and annoying" than old-fashioned paper charting, The Monitor further reports.

The value of electronic health records will likely improve if healthcare providers become more agile in using them and if the systems also are redesigned and updated to reflect the deficits many users find in them.