From the January/February 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


One of the things that AMA proposed is to simplify the program to provide more flexibility — there are eight different requirements with multiple measures — and eliminate the all-or-none to succeed metric. It also suggests that it focus more on the desire for outcomes.

“If they want data to be portable, quality reporting, and vaccinations to be reported to state health departments, they should allow for numerous different ways to fulfill those things and not define specifically that it must be a certain way,” says Stack. Stack also suggests that the program should remove all requirements that are outside of the physicians’ controls. Physicians should have to make records available to patients, but if the patient doesn’t look at the information, the physician should not be held accountable.


The vendors are also doing their part to help providers meet the requirements. Many of them host webinars and offer consulting to help them set up workflows to meet the measures.

Make them more usable!
A survey conducted by the American College of Physicians and AmericanEHR Partners found that the satisfaction and user ability ratings for EHRs have declined since 2010. User satisfaction fell by 12 percent from 2010 to 2012 and users who were “very dissatisfied” increased 10 percent during the same time.

“We live in a world where a two-year-old can use a smart-phone and a physician is crippled by an electronic health record,” says AMA’s Stack. “It’s not the doctor that is the problem here.” Physicians are reporting that the HER technology requires too much time-consuming data entry, which leaves them with less time for patients. According to Stack, physicians showing signs of burnout have increased from 45 percent to 55 percent from 2011 to 2014.

The federal government’s EHR incentive programs require that physicians use certified EHR technology. However, many of the physicians in the Medicare program have reported that the EHRs are so cumbersome that they are willing to accept the penalty because otherwise it would diminish the quality of care, says Stack. If Medicare-eligible professionals did not adopt and successfully demonstrate meaningful use of EHR technology by 2015, their Medicare physician fee schedule amount for covered professional services was reduced by 1 percent, according to HealthIT.gov.

In September 2014, the AMA released a new framework that outlines eight priorities for improving EHR usability. The priorities include enhancing physicians’ ability to provide high-quality patient care, supporting team-based care, promoting care coordination, offering product modularity and configurability, reducing cognitive workload, promoting data liquidity, facilitating digital and mobile patient engagement and expediting user input into product design and post-implementation feedback.

January/February 2016 Magazine

Read more stories from the January/February 2016 issue

More Magazine Features

More Industry Reports