Lost in the maze of technical requirements for participating in the goverment's EHR incentive program may be the fact that the technology is primarily supposed to support clinical quality improvements. Experts are increasingly calling for a greater focus on this in the next stages of meaningful use rules.

The first stage of meaningful use requires physicians to attest to the fact that the technology they are using meets certain technical standards. This is in addition to reporting measures of clinical quality. However, Michael Barr, a member of the Meaningful Use Workgroup of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, wrote on American EHR that he sees this dual reporting as redundant.

"Successfully reporting clinical quality measures would imply that the antecedent activities were accomplished," Barr wrote. "Therefore, why not drop the requirements to report on anything but the clinical quality measures and perhaps some process/structure metrics that are not directly associated with successful clinical quality measure reporting?"

ONC's Health IT Policy Committee previously proposed guidelines for incorporating more clinical quality measures into stage 2 meaningful use rules, according to Healthcare Scene.