Oh, mainstream media. Your incessant need to oversimplify things is confusing the public and making it impossible to have an honest, informed debate about reforming our nation’s bloated and dangerous healthcare industry.
On Monday, USA Today posted two stories about electronic health records to run in Tuesday’s print edition. One was a nice feature about artist and patient advocate Regina Holliday and her “Walking Gallery of Healthcare.”
The other was a policy-related story about the federal government responding to complaints by proposing to ease some EHR-related regulations. You know the issues: usability problems, lack of interoperability, fears of creating medical errors.
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While a consumer publication like USA Today rightfully avoids regulatory jargon, readers of MedCity News and other healthcare industry titles know that the latter story was about Meaningful Use. This paragraph erases any doubt:
Doctors and hospitals got $28 billion in federal stimulus money starting in 2011 to install EHR systems, also known as EMRs (electronic medical records). They were supposed to attest that they were using them to meaningfully improve patient care last year or lose some of their Medicare payments this year.
Unfortunately, two paragraphs earlier, the USA Today article said this: “Under Obamacare, doctors and hospitals are being pushed to switch from paper to electronic records or be penalized.”
Wrong. Meaningful Use, the federal EHR incentive program, stems not from the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare), but from the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. HITECH itself was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the “stimulus” bill that USA Today indirectly referenced.
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I tweeted to co-author Laura Ungar last night, and she responded.
@laura_ungar is just the latest MSM reporter to confuse the #ACA with the #HITECH Act. #Obamacare doesn’t incent #EHR use. #healthIT #hcr
— Neil Versel (@nversel) May 25, 2015
@nversel we didn’t confuse laws; ACA does encourage EHR. See: http://t.co/bIAdQyCSND
— Laura Ungar (@laura_ungar) May 26, 2015
I followed that up with these tweets:
@laura_ungar Technically, yes, but it’s an oversimplified, misleading statement.
— Neil Versel (@nversel) May 26, 2015
@laura_ungar Meaningful use, which is the program you describe in the article, is all HITECH.
— Neil Versel (@nversel) May 26, 2015
Even if the ACA does contain some language encouraging EHR usage, potentially millions of USA Today readers are being told that Obamacare is pushing physicians and hospitals to switch from paper to electronic records or face penalties. While it may come as a revelation to many that the ACA is about more than just insurance coverage, it’s simply incorrect to say, “Under Obamacare, doctors and hospitals are being pushed to switch from paper to electronic records or be penalized.”
All this does is reinforce people’s gut-based feelings toward the Affordable Care Act, that President Obama’s signature legislative achievement is either the panacea for all that ails American healthcare or an insidious plot to set the country on an irreversible path toward communism. Neither conclusion is true, yet try telling that to the millions who consume partisan media without bothering to challenge the veracity of ridiculous pronouncements.
How can we have an honest debate about healthcare reform when leading media outlets keep slapping every reform effort with the loaded “Obamacare” label, whether it’s true or not?
Photo: Flickr user Damian Gadal
