So, the U.S. government—CMS/ONC and some Senators—and CHIME (College of Healthcare Information Management Executives) are “discussing” the merits and best timing of HITECH and Meaningful Use.

This article provides a good summary of the questions and recommendations posed.

Some key points from the article and my thoughts…

• The Senators are fairly looking for evidence of results from the significant investment of taxpayer dollars. The reality is that this change is large and multifaceted. It will take time to reap the benefits once operations are normalized and productivity is enhanced.
• CHIME believe that there are merits to the government’s programs, but wants to slow the pace of change. I know from personal conversations with smart, effective folks working for respected providers that they are reeling from the number of implementation projects driven by ACO, MU and other initiatives that they have going right now. The troops may indeed need a short break and to reflect on lessons learned from the initial change.
• “CHIME also urged Congress to request an update from ONC regarding what technologies, architectures and strategies exist to mitigate patient matching errors” …it is interesting that CHIME is looking for this, as MPI (Master Patient Index)—also known as PIX (Patient Identifier Cross-Referencing) in the IHE Technical Framework—has been around for years and used in many projects to enable sharing of patient records across patient ID domains