ACP: Governmental Affairs and Public Policy - ACP Requests Senate to Introduce Similar or Companion Legislation to the Bipartisan H.R. 747

Advocacy

ACP Requests Senate to Introduce Similar or Companion Legislation to the Bipartisan H.R. 747

July 11, 2005

Senator Daniel Akaka
US Senate
141 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington DC 20510
Via Fax: (202) 224-2126

Dear Senator Akaka:

The American College of Physicians (ACP), representing 119,000 doctors of internal medicine and medical students, is writing to request that you introduce similar or companion legislation to the bipartisan H.R. 747, the “National Health Information Incentive Act.” This legislation provides targeted financial incentives to small health care physician practices, where nearly three-fourths of Medicare beneficiaries receive outpatient care. It compliments other bills that have recently been introduced in Congress that deal with the broader issues relating to development of a national system of interoperable health information technology, by targeting assistance toward a critical gap: health professionals in small practices that lack the resources to invest in HIT.

Policymakers agree that the full utilization of Health Information Technology (HIT) can revolutionize health care delivery by putting real-time clinically relevant patient information and up-to-date evidence-based clinical decision support tools in the hands of providers. Adoption of HIT will lead to the improvement of quality care and reduce the high costs for individuals with complex health problems, particularly for those Medicare patients with chronic conditions. Unfortunately, the high costs of acquiring such technologies remain prohibitively expensive for small physician practices.

Last week, the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) released a study documenting the significant lack of Medicare beneficiary access to physician practices with fully-integrated HIT systems. The study monitored physician practice adoption trends for the following five clinical functions: obtaining treatment guidelines; exchanging clinical data with other physicians; accessing patient notes; generating preventive treatment reminders for the physician’s use; and writing prescriptions.

While nearly half of the Medicare outpatient visits used at least one of these five clinical functions, according to the study, only 9 percent of visits were to physician practices with electronic prescribing capabilities. In addition, the HSC study confirmed the need for policymakers to better incentivize physician practices beyond what is currently being offered, especially for those smaller practices.

H.R. 747 is specifically targeted to those small physician practices by providing grants, loans, and tax credits. But more importantly, the legislation builds into the Medicare physician payment system an add-on code for office visits and other evaluation and management (E/M) services to identify that a service was facilitated by electronic health data systems, such as electronic health records, electronic prescribing and clinical decision support tools, when used to support physicians’ voluntary participation in performance measurement and improvement programs. This combination of one-time and on-going financial incentives will substantially speed HIT adoption and improve Medicare beneficiary access to physician practices with HIT.

ACP strongly believes the benefits of full-scale adoption of HIT will be significant, leading to a higher standard of quality in the U.S. health care system. Unfortunately, without adequate incentives for HIT adoption, small physician practices will be left behind the technological curve and their patients with them. Therefore, we hope you will consider taking the lead on sponsoring similar or companion legislation targeted at our nation’s smaller physician practices.

Sincerely,

C. Anderson Hedberg, M.D., FACP
President