The Senate health committee on the day of Tuesday accepted wide-ranging legislation designed to make better healthcare IT by changing needs regarding to the development and utilization of EHRs.
In a Feb. 9 executive mark-up session, the committee accepted and approved the Improving Health IT Act (S. 2511) launched by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the committee, and ranking member Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), which was also co-sponsored by Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-La.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).
By a roll call vote of 22-0, senators astonishingly accepted the legislation—a companion bill to the 21st Century Cures Act that was approved by the House of Representatives previous year.
Alexander informed the committee that health IT is serious to enabling national healthcare priorities like the industry’s transformation from fee-for-service to value-based payment models and the Obama administration’s $215 million Precision Medicine Initiative, which “totally rely on the victory of EHRs.” Although, he stated that EHRs are presently “in a ditch” and that the Improving Health Information Technology Act is among the “most significant work that this committee has done.”
The EHR issues that the bill finds to deal involve unessential burdensome physician documentation needs, a deficiency of HIT interoperability and worse usability, as well as data blocking by both contributors and vendors. In specific, it would develop a star-rating system for EHRs deployed on security, usability and interoperability to assist contributors better choose health information technology products.
In accordance to the legislation, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT will issue the criteria and methodology utilized to determine the star ratings on its website. Moreover, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is provided authority to decertify vendors’ HIT products if they do not make better from a 1-star performance rating.
Additionally, the bill offers the HHS Office of the Inspector General authority to inquire and develop deterrents to data blocking practices that interfere with suitable sharing of electronic health data.
“The Improving Health IT Act would make it convenient for contributors to vote with their feet when it comes to EHR systems and end the unfair practice of data blocking,” stated Murray. “It will provide new tools to assist move the market for health information technology towards more usable products that can easily share data when a contributor requires it and boost better sufferer approach to their own health records so they can be more encouraged to make informed healthcare decisions with their doctors.”
The legislation guides the HHS Secretary, in consultation with ONC, to promote plans that make sure that a sufferer’s electronic health data is approachable to that sufferer—and their designees—in a manner that “facilitates communication with the sufferer’s healthcare contributors and such sufferer’s choices, involving with respect to research.”
The act "will provide new tools to help move the market for health information technology towards more usable products that can conveniently share data when a contributor requires it."
Murray further added that America’s health IT infrastructure is a place where there is “a lot of momentum and a lot of chances to make development for sufferers.” She asserted that EHRs can make “an amazing, even life-saving difference in sufferer treatment and health” but it needs the advancement of legislation to “make certain our health IT system works better for sufferers and contributors.”
“My medical health data is mine. That is the law but most Americans do not actually understand that and have a complicated time getting approach to their own data,” commented Alexander.
To raise awareness of sufferers’ rights to approach their health records under HIPAA, the legislation calls on the HHS Office for Civil Rights—in consultation with ONC—to help customers and contributors better understand sufferer rights, involving “giving best practices for appealing personal health data in a computable format” like using patient portals or 3rd-party applications.
The bill also orders ONC—in coordination with OCR—to utilize existing authorities to empower health data exchange organizations and networks to partner with contributors, health policies, and other suitable entities to provide patients access to their electronic health data in a “single, longitudinal format that is convenient to understand, protect, and may update such data automatically.”
Nevertheless, Whitehouse stated that while “this is a good piece of legislation, there is a lot more that still requires to be done” in the area of health information technology.
“We need to offer a lot more support to the health data exchanges, rather than just sustaining with Meaningful Use,” he concluded. “We have got to address privacy problems that are bedeviling these systems…which were written before there were EHRs and require to be adjusted. And, ultimately we require doing something for behavioral health and for nursing homes that are outside of the Meaningful Use parameters.”
No comments:
Post a Comment