Meaningful Use Fraud
Community Health Systems, one of the country’s largest for-profit health systems, uses three EHR networks across its 118 hospitals: Cerner, Medhost and an in-house system from Health Management Associates (HMA), a 70-hospital organization CHS acquired in 2014. They are also under investigation for incentive payments under the federal Meaningful Use program. This all started from the “2017 eClinicalWorks controversy” in which the EHR company paid out $155 million to DOJ following whistleblower allegations that it knowingly caused providers to submit fraudulent EHR incentive payments. The fear was this would spread to other hospitals and…it did.
Meaningful use and quality metrics were a joke from the beginning. It set up hospitals and doctors to game the system and that is what happened. Most docs just did what had to be done to get through the day and it wasn’t some grand corruption scheme. I get that. Others, like the big hospitals, just hired consultants and bought EHRs that taught and allowed them to pocket as much money as they could. I hope the innocent go free but I am sure there will be collateral damage. Let’s just hope the bad guys are caught. I won’t hold my breath, however.
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Ah yes! Meaningless Abuse. Just another way in which healthcare delivery is improving under the attentive ministrations of our betters. Oh how we struggled before they found ways to guide us into the light.
Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Bureaucratic tampering usually leads to making otherwise honest people dishonest.
Is this why my dermatologist asks and documents whether or not I get my flu shot and pneumonia vaccine, even though he has no plans to give either one and never personally asked or acknowledged the form that I completed?
Yes, I personally like the documentation about weight loss counselling from my orthopedic colleagues. Although I have to say, a spine surgeon I sent a very heavy patient to see actually did counsel on weight loss.
It’s a game folks, but one we can’t win, and one that doesn’t benefit patients either.
Is it reasonable to assume at this point that all EHR vendors and hospital chains are thieves? We already know that insurance companies and big pharma are. I’m never quite sure what to attribute to fraud vs neglect/ignorance. Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Yes all EHR vendors are definitely thieves!!!
The hospitals via administrators also are thieves!