Doctors would rather be Penalized than go along with Meaningful Use

 HHS defines Meaningful use              Wikipedia defines Meaningful Use


Meaningful use is a term (MU) coined by CMS and HHS to describe their mandated information system for analysis of electronic health records.   Meaningful use has nothing to do with patient care or the usefulness of electronic health records for care givers. The term is highly misleading, implying something which it is not, nor designed to accomplish. In additon, it's mandated use is required to gain incentive patients for purchasing electronic medical record systemsThe main components of Meaningful Use are:

• The use of a certified EHR in a meaningful manner, such as e-prescribing.
• The use of certified EHR technology for electronic exchange of health information to improve quality of health care.
• The use of certified EHR technology to submit clinical quality ot

In other words, providers need to show they're using certified EHR technology in ways that can be measured significantly in quality and in quantity.^[131]

The meaningful use of EHRs intended by the US government incentives is categorized as follows:

• Improve care coordination
• Reduce healthcare disparities
• Engage patients and their families
• Improve population and public health
• Ensure adequate privacy and security

The Obama Administration's Health IT program intends to use federal investments to stimulate the market of electronic health records:

• Incentives: to providers who use IT
• Strict and open standards: To ensure users and sellers of EHRs work towards the same goal
• Certification of software: To provide assurance that the EHRs meet basic quality, safety, and efficiency standards

The detailed definition of "meaningful use" is to be rolled out in 3 stages over a period of time until 2017. Details of each stage are hotly debated by various groups.^[132

Thousands of eligible providers are working diligently toward EHR incentive payments, but some practices are choosing a different route: abandoning meaningful use altogether in favor of their own solutions, and finding ways to make up for the penalties they’ll incur down the road.

Some 6 percent of physicians, in fact, will be “abandoning meaningful use after meeting it in previous years,” according to the Medscape report on EHR use in 2014. In surveying nearly 20,000 doctors, Medscape found another 16 percent admitting that they would never be attesting to meaningful use in any capacity. 

More about Meaningful Use and why physicians find it counterproductive and a barrier to patient care.
The Barriers to Meaningful Use