PITTSBURG POST GAZETTE: Four Republican House leaders sent a letter Friday to U.S. Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, asking the department to suspend payments to hospitals and physicians practices that switch from paper to electronic health records.
The foursome — Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Lancaster; Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich.; Rep. Fred Upton, D-Mich.; and Rep. Wally Herger, R-Calif. — say they have serious concerns about an incentive system that “squanders taxpayer dollars and does little, if anything, to improve outcomes for Medicare.”
Much of the letter focused on the alleged ambiguity of recently published “meaningful use” criteria — the standards by which the federal government will judge whether hospitals and doctors have upgraded their electronic medical records systems in meaningful ways.
The congressmen also said that, despite the $10 billion disbursed thus far in incentives, there is little proof that the IT system upgrades are helping the health care system move toward an interoperable digital system that can trade patients’ medical information… (more)
EDITOR: This is amazing. Pitts must be aware that Lancaster General Hospital is spending well over a hundred million dollars in an endeavor to convert over to an area wide electronic health records system. Pitts would be right if his concern was that there is no national standard to assure that all such systems would be interconnected.
