Health IT community debates 'meaningful use'

The use of registries to gather data on the treatment progress and outcomes of patients with chronic diseases would show "meaningful use" of health IT, according to Carolyn Clancy, director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Registries track patient data over time, enabling providers to identify and respond to patterns in their treatment of a group of patients with similar conditions, such as diabetes. They can range from simple lists to sophisticated electronic health record applications.

Clancy spoke April 28 at a discussion about “meaningful use” of health IT sponsored by the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS), an advisory panel to the Health and Human Services Department.

The term has become code for those health IT functions physicians and practices will have to offer in order to qualify for Medicare bonus payments under the recently passed economic stimulus law. But HHS must first define the term and provide guidance to healthcare providers on how they can meet its conditions.

Clancy said meaningful use will incorporate improved quality, outcomes and value, and it will spur data sharing.

Using a registry, for example, a physician could contact patients when a more effective medication or path of treatment became evident, Clancy said. The registry would already be populated with information from the patients’ electronic health records and other linked databases.

“We haven’t yet reached an approach system-wide where the right thing to do is the easy thing to do,” she said. Products also have to be easier to use to attract physicians in small practices that do not use computers, she said.

Healthcare providers will likely encounter a few administrative hoops in complying with the new law, speakers said.

In order to qualify for bonus payments, for instance, providers will have to validate meaningful use through some type of performance measure, according to Terry McGeeney, chief executive officer of TransforMED, which designs health practice services.

Meaningful use should not require providers to have a comprehensive electronic health record, he said. Instead it should focus on what health information functionality and capabilities practices should possess.

McGeeney recommended technologies that provide incremental value to physicians and put hospitals on the path toward comprehensive electronic health record systems. Health IT adoption could therefore be “not a push phenomenon but a pull phenomenon,” he said.