New Options for Meeting Meaningful Use for Community Physician Practices

David C. Kibbe, MD, MBA, Senior Advisor, American Academy of Family Physicians, and Chair, ASTM International E31Technical Committee on Healthcare Informatics. While most of the public commentary on HITECH so far has been directed to the NPRM on meaningful use, the real news here relates to the deconstruction of EHRs that is described in the interim final rule, IFR, covering EHR standards and implementation specifications. Expect a revolution in the marketplace for EHR technology, with new “meaningful use” product offerings that are much less expensive than their legacy competition. Physicians and their organizations will have new choices for EHRs that embrace component or modular architectures, use web-based delivery also known as “software-as-a-service”, and offer practical means of achieving interoperable data exchange between applications from different vendors. If you want to know why physicians are waiting on the sidelines, this helps to explain the phenomenon.