AHA comments on ONC strategy to reduce regulatory, administrative burden 

Commenting Friday on the Office of the National Coordinator’s draft strategy to reduce regulatory and administrative burden related to health information technology and electronic health record use, AHA commended the agency for its attention to reducing excessive burden. However, AHA urged ONC and its partner agencies to continue to explore changes to EHR clinical documentation that go beyond high-level changes to evaluation and management (E/M) documentation, to evaluate whether certain requirements should be eliminated and evaluate new requirements for their impact on burden. With respect to prior authorization, AHA said some ONC recommendations to further automate the process and advance new standards could have unintended consequences for adoption of current standards and would not address the lack of transparency or uniformity around payer requirements. AHA also urged the Department of Health and Human Services to align Medicare and Medicaid clinician requirements in the Promoting Interoperability Program; improve its systems for attesting to meaningful use of EHRs; and improve its certification requirements for electronic clinical quality measures. AHA also noted that lack of interoperability affects the usability of EHRs and urged ONC and its partner agencies to move forward with policies to support information exchange.