Meaningful Use is an important set of criteria designed to improve quality and safety, but is it accomplishing its mission? The proposed rules for Meaningful Use (MU) Stage 3 were just released by both CMS and the ONC. Many writers have commented on these rules, and this blog post is not a commentary about the rules.
As always, I recommend readers go to John Halamka’s blog. Instead, I want to comment about the whole process. Let me start by saying that I am a strong believer in the concept of the Meaningful Use program. It is well known that healthcare in the United States is tremendously expensive, yet does not provide the levels of quality of care and patient safety that should be achievable with this outlay.
The thought that fostering the use of electronic medical records (EMRs) would improve both cost, as well as quality and safety issues, is probably valid —although it should be noted that all of the countries that show better outcomes at less cost have lower adoption of EMRs than is the current state of the U.S.
