Cancel, Don't Delay, Meaningful Use Stage 3 for Electronic Health Records

Over one quarter of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives – 116 of them - just signed a letter to the U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services urging delay of the next step in the federal government’s struggling effort to impose uniform federal requirements for health information technology.

The rule in question is Meaningful Use Stage 3 (MU3), imposed by the federal government via the HITECH Act of 2009. The so-called “stimulus” act committed almost $30 billion to induce physicians and health facilities to install Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and move patient records beyond clipboards and manila file folders. This proved a huge boon to companies selling EHRs.

Yet, there remains one obstacle: The EHRs were supposed to be interoperable – to speak to each other.  They do not.

Read the entire column at Forbes.