Industry reacts to flurry of healthcare IT bills.

The Health TEQ bill was quickly endorsed by organizations such as the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives--but not without reservations.

The AAFP supports the bill's call for pilot tests on the effectiveness of using value-based purchasing--also known as pay-for-performance--for Medicare payment. "However," says AAFP Board Chair Michael Fleming, M.D., "value-based purchasing depends on the widespread use of interoperable health information technology everywhere in the healthcare system, including physicians' offices. Given the limited dispersion of this technology at the present time, it may be unrealistic to expect that, in two years, it will be feasible to implement any technology-based purchasing program."

Fleming says P4P programs should not be budget-neutral. The pilots and any ensuing payment system should reward physicians for high quality care rather than provide "incentives" to some by withholding a percentage of all physicians' payment. Fleming cautions: "If the value-based purchasing does not involve added funding, then physicians may rind it difficult, if not impossible financially, to participate."

MGMA is concerned about "what types of quality measures will be chosen by HHS as they decide what value-based care means," says Michele Johnson, MGMA senior government relations representative. MGMA is watching HHS to see how it handles a definition of "efficiency" and if it follows the private sector path of defining efficient physicians in terms of resource over- or under-utilization. Johnson says the organization wants to make sure that as value-based purchasing is defined, a consideration of quality measures as well as resource utilization is included.

Dr. David Brailer, national coordinator for health information technology, told a Senate subcommittee on June 30 that health IT legislation introduced by Congress could hamper efforts to modernize the U.S. healthcare system. "We are already under way ... our concern is about legislation slowing down this process," said Brailer, quoted in CongressDaily.