Washington, DC - Steven J. Stack, MD President-Elect, American Medical Association: "The American Medical Association welcomes the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) announcement of plans to address some of the issues we have raised with the Meaningful Use program through rulemaking aimed at requirements for meeting Meaningful Use in 2015.

"We are eager to see the proposed rule as we have been working with CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) offering solutions to improve the incentive program for quite some time. Most recently, we provided recommendations for revamping the electronic health record (EHR) certification process, a blueprint for fixing the Meaningful Use program and a framework for improving EHR usability.

"EHRs are intended to help physicians improve care for their patients, but unfortunately, today's EHR certification standards and the stringent requirements of the Meaningful Use program do not support that goal and decrease efficiency.

"We hope the new rule will be issued expediently to provide the flexibility needed to allow more physicians to successfully participate in the Meaningful Use program and better align Meaningful Use with other quality reporting programs such as the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) and the Value-base Modifier (VBM). Additionally, we hope ONC will address problems with interoperability and support technologies that provide the ability for information to be exchanged, incorporated and presented to a physician in a contextual and meaningful manner.

"We look forward to continuing to work with the Administration to achieve our mutual goal of helping physicians improve the quality of care for their patients through the use of health information