In a testimony before the Senate Committee on Finance, Mark McClellan, MD, PhD, director and senior fellow of the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institute, recognized the potential of electronic health record systems, but claimed the current technology is often unable to meet the demands of the changing industry.
"Better capabilities in electronic record systems are also needed, to combine the data needed for meaningful quality measures and to enable the measures themselves," he said.
He said even though EHR vendors are making progress in creating systems that allow for better care coordination, many organizations have been using different solutions to pull patient data from multiple sources to evaluate quality of care, efforts which should be supported:
"For example, providers that are able to report electronically on outcome-oriented performance measures for their patients should qualify for meaningful use payments. The emphasis should be on whether data are actually flowing to enable better patient care, not on the specific features of an individual EHR system."
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