HHS pledges to reduce health IT regulatory burdens on clinicians

Providers are spending too much time entering data into electronic health records, leaving less time to interact with patients, while having difficulty finding relevant patient information to effectively coordinate care.

That’s the contention of the Department of Health and Human Services, which issued a draft strategy on Wednesday—required by the 21st Century Cures Act—to reduce administrative and regulatory burdens on doctors.

“Health IT tools need to be intuitive and functional so that clinicians can focus on their patients and not documentation,” said Don Rucker, the National Coordinator for HIT. “This draft strategy identifies ways the government and private sector can alleviate burden. I look forward to input from the public to improve this strategy.”

The strategy has three core goals: to reduce effort and time required to input data in EHRs; reduce effort and time to meet regulatory reporting requirements for providers, hospitals and other healthcare organizations; as well as improve the functionality and intuitiveness of EHRs.

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In a blog posting, Andrew Gettinger, MD, chief clinical officer at ONC and Kate Goodrich, MD, chief medical officer at CMS, released a 74-page draft strategy, available here.

Gettinger and Goodrich acknowledge that interoperability will not be achieved for users until their experience with EHRs and other information systems are made seamless and effortless—becoming truly interoperable.

“In its roles as a payer and regulator, we believe there are many steps HHS can take to reduce burden by reassessing and revising different regulatory and operational aspects of federal programs, and with effective leadership on the key challenges of health IT-related burden,” they wrote. “For instance, targeted action by CMS through its reporting and payment programs can impact the significant number of healthcare providers that participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, as well as set a direction for the rest of the healthcare sector.”

The agency also said that it stands ready to help the health IT industry toward solutions that result in reduced burden for clinicians by promoting common standards for HIT systems that support better efficiency, interoperability and best practices for usability of systems.