Dive Brief:
- According to a letter from Pew to the HHS secretary last week, co-signed by a variety of patient care stakeholders and advocates, EHR systems need to include implant device IDs—called unique device identifiers (UDIs)—in order to improve patient safety and quality care for those with implanted medical devices such as pacemakers, artificial hips and cardiac stents.
- The UDI program, which gives each implanted medical device a unique ID number, was approved by the FDA in 2013, and manufacturers now use the system in every implanted device. Pew's letter asked the HHS secretary to "enable and encourage providers to document the specific medical devices implanted in patients as part of forthcoming rules on the electronic health record certification and meaningful use programs."
- "The new UDI system will allow physicians and patients to know which devices are implanted and used in care," the letter stated. "This new system has the potential to facilitate recalls, improve clinical decision support and enhance the data available on medical device performance. The development of certification criteria and a Meaningful Use objective to support UDI capture are critical next steps to achieve those benefits."
Dive Insight:
This could be a case of "right destination, but wrong route."
It’s not like the HHS Meaningful Use program doesn’t already have a mountain of baggage dragging behind it already. With Congress gearing up to push for Stage 3 rules to back down from some of the all-or-nothing rules of Stage 2, maybe now is not the right time to suggest Meaningful Use as a method for mandating specific fields in EHRs. Moreover, even after Congress authorized spending $28 billion last year to create incentives for providers to implement EHRs, progress is still slow.
Pew's idea is a borderline no-brainer. With millions of patients around the US walking around with medical devices inside them, it seems unthinkable that EHR vendors and their healthcare customers haven't already targeted this fix. But is asking HHS to mandate it through a program that's struggling already like trying to pour another gallon of milk into a jug already overflowing?