CMS' Berwick gets to work selling the meaningful use EHR rule

Meaningful UseOn his second day of work as head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Donald Berwick got down to business, pitching the final meaningful use rule for 2011-12, as a "win-win," which would directly improve patient safety, flow, and reduce costs.

He spoke from experience. He was lucky enough to be an early EHR adopter when he worked at Harvard Community Health Plan. Every time he saw a patient, "there were no lost records, no delays, no wasted time rummaging for a missing piece of paper," he recalled during a press conference to introduce the finished rule. Specialist notes were in the system as soon as the specialist prepared those notes. Automated reminders popped up when patients needed immunizations. He received alerts on drug interactions.

Meaningful use would directly improve patient safety and patient flow while cutting costs, he said.

Still, Berwick recognized that the shift wouldn't be immediate from legacy paper systems to electronic medical records. "It's really a new culture," he said. "You don't get there in one step."

The rule will allow doctors and hospitals to get payments for adopting electronic health records (EHR) under the HITECH Act's incentive program.

David Blumenthal, national coordinator for Health Information Technology, echoed Berwick's sentiments, noting that he saw EHR prevent him from making truly harmful errors and avoid unneeded X-rays. "Small victories one by one spread across millions of decisions made by the healthcare system could bend the quality curve up and cost curve down," he said.

Blumenthal made this promise about electronic health record systems: "Almost no physicians will go back once they've started using one."

To learn more:
- find the final rule and associated fact sheets here
- read Dr. David Blumenthal's article on the new regulation in the New England Journal of Medicine (You'll find the core measures here.)
- read U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin's NEJM story of how she found her way to electronic health records
- read FierceHealthcare's story to learn what EHR goals providers must meet in order to obtain incentive payments

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