The acting administrator at the Centers for Medicare &
Medicaid Services (CMS), Andrew
Slavitt, announced on January 11, 2016, that "The Meaningful Use
program as it has existed will now effectively be over, and be replaced with
something better". The announcement
occurred at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco.
Meaningful
Use is dead. Just like that.
As the Meaningful Use money making opportunities are ending,
CMS
is "moving to a new regime." “We have to get the hearts and
minds of physicians back. I think we’ve lost them,” Mr.
Slavitt said. He noted that, when the meaningful use incentive program
began, few physicians and practices used electronic health records and concerns
were that many would not willingly embrace information technology. Now that
“virtually everywhere care is delivered has a computer,” it’s time to make
health care technology serve beneficiaries and the physicians who serve them,
Mr. Slavitt said.
The cost,
however, was too high, Mr. Slavitt said.
Meaningful use was created by an act of Congress, and
enshrined for posterity in a subsequent act of Congress, the Medicare Access
and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA).
Soon, CMS will no longer reward health care providers for
using technology, but will instead focus on patient outcomes through the
merit-based incentive pay systems created by last year’s Medicare Access and
CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) legislation. In addition to asking physicians
to work with health care IT innovators to create systems that work best
according to their practice’s respective needs, CMS is calling on the
private sector to create apps and analytic tools that will keep data secure
while fostering true and widespread interoperability.
Meaningful Use is dead.
What’s coming next?
Paying physicians for outcomes.
It is the use of evidence-based medicine. It is
interoperability and "user-centered" design. It is accountable care
organizations, value, patient-centeredness, coordination and such. It is also
the making of markets "by leveling the technology playing field for
start-ups and new entrants."
The AMA is launching a "Silicon Valley integrated innovation company" to monetize its members in service to the new CMS regime. The AMA is a founding partner in the Silicon Valley (Calif.)
based Health2047, a company
focused on supporting health IT and other entrepreneurs in their efforts to
provide physicians with digital tools that improve patient outcomes, among
other innovations.
Central to the AMA’s plan for the future: Helping physicians
restructure practice via technology. The goal of Health2047 is to leverage physicians'
expertise to "help forge new paths and bring commercial solutions to
market faster," and of course to
make boatloads of money for investors, including the AMA.
After collectively sinking billions of dollars in certified
EHR technology over the last 5 years, hospitals and doctors will now be
expected to foot the bill for new software and computer products to support the
lifestyles of a new generation of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the
insatiable greed of the old generation of Silicon Valley investors. Why?
Because the next app is sure to fix health care in America.
It's always the next one. There is always "something
better" you can buy. Planned obsolescence, which is fueling the fortunes
of Silicon Valley and destroying life everywhere else, has finally arrived to
the $3 trillion health care sector.
Meaningful Use is not just about onerous burdens on
physicians. It is also about regulating design and production of medical
software to serve the needs and wants of government and large corporations.
So There.
Sources:
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