Health IT Group Urges Restraint

As the government considers which "quality measures" to include in the second round of meaningful use requirements for electronic health records, members of a federal health IT policy committee are urging restraint.

"I am nervous that the government is going to get into the EHR design business," said Judy Faulkner, chief executive officer of Epic Systems and a member of the Health IT Policy Committee, which advises the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Faulkner's comments appeared in InformationWeek.

Her observations followed a presentation by the committee's newly formed quality workgroup. That subcommittee, one of 10 that reports to the full committee, will make recommendations on how to prioritize quality measures that will inform meaningful use criteria in the more restrictive second phase of those standards. Compliance with those standards will determine whether health care providers receive financial incentives for using EHRs or, later on, financial penalties for noncompliance.

"We need to be careful about these committees not becoming the design committees for what the country will do," said Faulkner.

Neal Calman, president of the Institute for Family Health and a member of the committee, expressed concern that overly broad quality measures could divert attention away from "improvement activities" that might be more relevant to a particular organization.

"Once you set out measures," he said, "you get organizations to function around those measures."