WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) today joined Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) to introduce the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Regulatory Relief Act, legislation that would provide regulatory flexibility and hardship relief to providers and hospitals operating under the meaningful use program.

“Leveraging health information technology holds the promise of improving patient care and better utilizing taxpayer funds,” said Roberts. “However, the prescriptive nature of the meaningful use program has made it nearly unworkable for our doctors and hospitals.  I am proud we have found some reasonable ways to provide much needed regulatory relief to the program and allow our health care professionals to spend more timing focusing on what they do best – caring for patients.”

“Health information technology, especially the advancements in electronic health records, is an integral part of the future of America’s health care delivery system,” said Thune. “Our bill ensures that unnecessary regulatory burdens do not continue to negatively affect providers’ ability to leverage technology to improve patient care. I’m thankful for the administration’s willingness to provide constructive feedback and engage with Senate REBOOT members on this important piece of legislation.”

“This legislation will help ease the burden of the Meaningful Use program for doctors and hospitals who have told me they want to spend more time caring for patients instead of trying to comply with government regulations,” said Alexander, chairman of the Senate health committee. “Specifically, it will give hospitals the same flexibility that Congress passed for doctors with overwhelming bipartisan support last April, and it will give doctors and hospitals the certainty of law that the 90-day reporting window for Meaningful Use proposed by CMS earlier this month is here to stay. I look forward to Senate passage of this legislation as we continue to work to pull the electronic medical records system out of the ditch, transforming it into something that doctors and hospitals look forward to rather than dread.”

The Kansas Hospital Association and the Kansas Medical Society have expressed their strong support for the EHR Regulatory Relief Act. “We believe the reconsideration of the ‘all or nothing’ approach, reducing the reporting period to 90-days and extending the hardship exceptions facilitate the commitment of our Kansas hospitals to move toward a more e-enabled health care system, to improve patient care and safety and achieve national goals of meaningful health information exchange,” said Tom Bell, President & CEO of the Kansas Hospital Association.

“The ever increasing regulations and requirements to demonstrate quality through record keeping and reporting are at odds with physicians’ focus on actual patient care and improved outcomes. We appreciate the work of Senator Roberts and the REBOOT Group to provide necessary flexibility to ensure that the purpose of the meaningful use program is not thwarted by the process of its implementation. We support the EHR Regulatory Relief Act and thank Senator Roberts for partnering with providers in their efforts to deliver excellent care to patients,” said Dr. Jay Gilbaugh of Wichita, President of the Kansas Medical Society Board of Trustees.

The senators’ legislation would shorten the reporting period for eligible physicians and hospitals from 365 days to 90 days, relax the all-or-nothing nature of the current program requirements, and extend the ability for eligible providers and hospitals to apply for a hardship exemption from the meaningful use requirements. 

In April, the senators wrote to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt to request input on a draft bill, and with the feedback they received, developed the version that was introduced today.

Click here for a summary document and here for legislative text.

Roberts, Thune, Alexander, Enzi, and Burr are original members of the Senate’s health IT working group, Re-examining the Strategies Needed to Successfully Adopt Health IT (REBOOT). In 2013, the senators released a white paper in which they outlined their concerns with current federal health IT policy, including increased health care costs, lack of momentum toward interoperability, potential waste and abuse, patient privacy, and long-term sustainability.

The white paper was part of a broader effort to solicit feedback from the administration and foster an ongoing conversation on improving the health IT program with the stakeholder community, including health care providers, technology vendors, and others.

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