The window for public comments on Meaningful Use Stage 3 criteria for electronic health records closed this week as part of the HITECH Act. Now four health IT groups, including the American Telemedicine Association and Telecommunications Industry Association are calling on Congress to ensure that interoperability and remote monitoring are part of the criteria. In particular, they want remote monitoring devices for patients with chronic conditions to be able to transmit information directly to EHRs.
A letter to the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees requested that Congress require EHR systems to incorporate open, voluntary, and consensus-based industry standards for interoperability with remote patient monitoring systems. It also wants the Department of Health and Human Services to establish target goals for remote monitoring of patient-generated health data for those with one or more chronic conditions such as myocardial infarction, COPD and pneumonia.
It’s the latest healthcare technology news about the HITECH Act, which sets down three stages for providers to demonstrate meaningful use goals for EHR systems to qualify for incentive payments.
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“MU Stage 3 should be made to tie incentive payments to exclusively use interoperable EHR products that guarantee useable data regardless of vendor,” the letter said. Continua Health Alliance and Association for Competitive Technology also signed the letter.
The Office of the National Coordinator produced an outline of what Stage 3 Meaningful Use goals would be like in September (pages 19 to 24). As you might expect they’re fairly broad. The overall goal is to improve patient outcomes.
Some health IT companies have developed ways to transmit patient information to EHRs in real time. But it’s far from a mainstream trend at this point. There are several key ingredients that are in place. Health IT and telecommunications companies have developed ways to make the transmission of patient data between medical devices, EHRs and the cloud HIPAA-compliant. But getting them to work seamlessly together is the ultimate goal.
Last year, 308,000 patients were remotely monitored for congestive heart failure, COPD, diabetes, hypertension and mental health conditions, according to a January 2013 report from InMedica. It projects patient numbers will grow to 1.8 million by 2017.
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As remote monitoring increases as a way to reduce hospitalization costs, hospitals need to keep re-admissions for certain chronic conditions below the national rate. Interoperability plays a key role in doing that. But an enormous challenge posed by interoperability is how to standardize what are essentially a wide array of disparate systems so that the relevant patient information is transmitted accurately and reliably into electronic health records.
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