Ask seven different people involved in health care today what their opinions are of electronic health records (EHRs), and you’ll probably get seven different answers. Health insurance providers might be pleased with the smaller amounts of paperwork, and more tech-savvy physicians are likely happy they can share patient imaging files, lab test results and health information across facilities. Patients, however, are often confused by the requirements, and health administrators and IT departments are bearing the brunt of a lack of integration between platforms, data security risks and extra administrative work to update records, which often require duplicated tasks. In particular, transition to EHR has been slower and more problematic for smaller and more rural healthcare facilities.
While many healthcare practices and facilities have resisted using electronic records for these very reasons, soon practitioners who see Medicare patients may have no choice. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has proposed a new rule that federally qualified health centers and rural clinics must use EHR in accordance with the 2014 Edition of meaningful use requirements at a minimum starting in January of 2016 if they wish to receive higher reimbursement for managing Medicare patients with two or more chronic conditions, according to Health Data Management. The new rule did not say by how much the new rules would raise reimbursement for Medicare patients.
“Certified health IT must be used for the recording of demographic information, health-related problems, medications and medication allergies, a clinical summary record, and other scope of service requirements that reference a health or medical record,” the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services states in the rule setting the Part B physician fee schedule.
In the same proposed rule, CMS also proposed requiring that care plan information be available 24/7 as well as new minimum EHR capabilities that support data sharing for better coordinated care. In addition, CMS also proposed several changes to Medicare's telehealth coverage policy to allow for the reimbursement of some in-home telehealth services. The full list of proposed rules may be found here.
While EHR conversions remain controversial – as a mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or “Obamacare”), there are politics involved – supporters say electronic records are necessary in the future for chronic disease management, since advanced data analytics can uncover better standards of care and prevent mistakes while keeping administrative costs lower.