Morning Headlines 11/6/15

Dear John Halamka and the rest of the ONC leaders past and present….
I hope that all of you in ONC positions or influence actually hear from street level front line providers. MU is devastating the practicing providers, its ruining the EHR vendor – provider relationship. All resources by vendors are used to figure out, implement and program systems to achieve some massive everchanging federal regulatory burden. There is nothing left for usability, efficiency safety or security that providers are so desperately asking for…. MU fits no practice, Ok, may 10% of overachieving data entry practices, but not 99% of them. And its a complete distraction to patient care and a huge burden. Those of us out here trying to care for patients have had enough of MU PQRS CQM MIPS MACRA VBM etc. So you can have 3000 measures and or objectives or whatever you want to call it for Stage 2 and 3, but we have given up. We are going to take our lumps with penalties. And if that was your goal, congrats, you achieved some savings through penalties. But you have also disenfranchised 100’s of thousands of providers. For anyone that has some influence with ONC or CMS or MU or all this data entry check boxing, pop up disaster making, please stop. Quit devaluing physicians and providers. I think the calls for action will get louder and more angry. And that is never good. You guys are leaders, please stop trying to be “yes men” to complex regulatory action and listen to your colleagues that what you are doing is terrible to both us and for our patients. Its time to end MU and get out of our way. Stop thinking for us, standardizing for us, telling us what you think is good or bad. Its beyond annoying at this point. I know John, you are trying ever so eloquently, but its not effective. I do not think they are hearing you. Its time to be much more direct and harsh. Someone has to say this stuff and you need to hear it.