Healthcare providers are genuinely committed to providing the best care they can to patients, of course, but in many instances, the common reality of running on only a few days? cash flow often trumps loftier goals. Much as CMS policy has already had a marked impact on hospital readmission rates by associating them with payments, creating a direct relationship between payment and data exchange would have the same result. This could be the strongest step taken to create a genuine imperative for interoperability.
H.R. 2, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), is a good start in the right direction, but Congress needs to ensure that alternative payment models envisioned in this reform are rolled out appropriately. The good news is that the expansion of delivery reforms is already motivating accelerated electronic data exchange progress. We see this in ACOs, and demonstrations like the Comprehensive Primary Care Initiative, which Allscripts supports as the technology provider for a very sizable percentage of the participants. Simply put, they create a use case for health IT that focuses on clinical value and less on what level of visit they can code. We have already seen real change result within our client base from new approaches at CMS and within the commercial payer space, and I expect that will accelerate as MACRA is implemented.
For this reason, given the volume of new programs that have been and are being rolled out along with Meaningful Use Stage 3, which we expect to push the industry further in terms of interoperability, we encourage Congress to allow the impacts of these recent changes to play out further before additional legislation is passed specific to interoperability. There is an opportunity to see what adjustments providers make in response to the new payment models and what steps they start taking to maximize the new revenue opportunities.
Generally, the same recommendation applies to standards development work ? it is important that there be time for maturation and the fine-tuning of elements that are already being embraced by the industry (for example, Direct and CDA), and there is no need to toss aside approaches that are working. This doesn?t preclude exploring new and innovative approaches in an appropriately transparent manner, but the work done with standards development is not intended to have a lifetime of two years or five but longer than that so it?s important to move thoughtfully. I do understand the eagerness of Congress, the Administration and industry stakeholders to move rapidly because everyone is keen to see the results, but looking to standards as a panacea for the challenges still ahead of us will only result in usability complaints from providers as immature technologies are
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