Last week week we released a congratulatory statement on
the positive proposals laid out at the Senate Health, Education, Labor and
Pensions (HELP) Committee’s Health IT hearing. I’m encouraged by the
proactive position HELP is taking on promoting health IT adoption (with proposed big
financial backing); we need to continue to encourage Congress and the new
administration to support health IT — but, along with firm standards for interoperability.
The statement says, "the money Obama's plan puts into the infrastructure will
be wasted if interoperability standards are not also put into place." These
standards will allow clinicians to access information from multiple
sources to help make better informed medical decisions to avoid adverse drug
events, and to encourage patients to adhere to evidence-based medication
regimens.
More was cooking last week. The Progressive Policy
Institute (a Blue-Dog Democrat think tank) also put out a statement promoting health IT investment that included a great deal of ACC policy consideration. With our
help that statement did NOT include over-kill privacy protection language -- as
first proposed -- that would place barriers in front of most chronic disease
management, registries like NCDR, and interoperability. The patient should be
able to protect and direct their data, but if requires affirmative
authorizations at every step and every time information is exchanged, it can’t
realistically occur. Maybe we need to mobilize the profession, along with consumer
groups, to develop an “opt-in” unique patient identifier that would make all of
this easier for patients who want their information available at the point of
care (for life-saving reasons). Those greatly worried about privacy would not
need to participate. The recommendations of the ACC Informatics Committee,
chaired by Mike Mirro, M.D., F.A.C.C., have provided great input for these documents. [Mike contributed to the Lewin Report this month on health IT ... I encourage you to read and comment on his post.] The
e-Health Initiative (we are members) also put out a very positive health IT promotion
statement last week which we significantly helped to craft.
More health IT coverage in the blog-o-sphere this week:
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