News: HHS releases plan to reduce clinical EHR burdens
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finalized a set of strategies to lower the EHR burdens on clinicians to help them “focus their attention on patients rather than paperwork.”
The report, required by the 21st Century Cures Act, was developed by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) in collaboration with CMS.
The three primary goals of the HHS report are to:
- Reduce the time and effort spent documenting patient encounters
- Reduce the time and effort spent meeting reporting requirements
- Improve the usability of EHRs
The report states that the HHS can directly affect these three areas through its rule-making process. An example of this effort is CMS’ changes to the evaluation and management (E/M) system which take effect in 2021. These changes make it easier to justify E/M codes based on the complexity of medical decision making or time spent delivering care to a patient.
Another major goal is to simplify the prior authorization process. The report states that ONC should identify common data elements and templates that EHR developers could implement to automate prior authorization. According to the report, the government should engage with commercial payers, healthcare providers, and standards development organizations to make this happen.
The report recommends that the government focus on more effective clinical decision support to improve health IT usability. Developers should work towards standardizing user interfaces of EHRs to minimize confusion when providers switch systems.
It also recommends EHR companies “standardize medical information within health IT” and “standardize order entry content within health IT.” ONC is continuing to designate common clinical data elements, some being part of the Consolidated Clinical Data Architecture summaries that all certified EHRs must be able to exchange with each other.
The report notes that the quality payment program has increased providers’ EHR-related burdens. CMS recently reduced the number of required measures and simplified scoring methods for clinicians and hospitals. ONC said it is still difficult for practices to report quality data electronically. Addressing this will require collaboration between the government and EHR developers.
The report states that CMS should continue to invest in technical assistance for providers such as the quality payment program for small practices and those in rural areas.
According to the HHS report, it is still a challenge for providers to report electronically to public health programs, partly because of government regulations. It recommends state prescription drug monitoring programs and electronic prescribing of controlled substances.
Additionally, the report suggests HHS work with states to increase clinicians’ ability to query prescription drug monitoring programs at the point of care. That way, ONC and states could adopt common industry standards. HHS can increase adoption of electronic prescribing of controlled substances by implementing the Support for Patients and Communities Act.
Editor’s note: The HHS report can be found here. Other ACDIS articles on EHR provider burden can be found here, here, and here.