 | |
| |
TechnologyDaily Mobile
Here's Technology To Your Health
by Brittany R. Ballenstedt, for Technology Daily
Technology has transformed almost every sector of the American economy over the last 30 years, drastically changing the way information is collected, managed and shared. Yet despite such notable progress, the healthcare sector has been slow to adapt.
Much of the government believes that the use of health information technology to connect different systems can provide higher quality care, reduce medical errors and lower healthcare costs to consumers while also providing early detection and improved tracking of diseases. But the costs of building a network and resistance to change have impeded its implementation.
In 2004, President Bush outlined his vision for transforming health care by issuing an executive order to establish a national coordinator for health IT to advise the Health and Human Services Department's secretary on health IT initiatives. His first health IT coordinator since has left the job, and much of Bush's vision for a health IT system remains far from implementation.
Some progress has been made, however. Here are some notable health IT initiatives:
Executive Branch
National Health Information Network. In November 2004, the health IT coordinator issued a request to gather public input on the development of the network and later discovered that a lack of uniform standards within the healthcare system was a major obstacle.
To help deploy the initiative, HHS awarded four contracts totaling $18.6 million to develop prototypes for the nationwide network. The four contractors -- Accenture, Computer Sciences Corp., IBM and Northrop Grumman -- are tasked with developing a uniform architecture and prototype network for secure information-sharing among hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies and physicians. The prototypes will test patient identification, user authentication, security protections and the feasibility of large-scale deployment of health IT.
American Health Information Community. In 2005, HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt formed a 17-member advisory panel to guide the healthcare transformation. Under a two-year charter, the panel is charged with making recommendations that ensure privacy and security protections, prioritizing health IT achievements, and developing a product certification process. The charter can be renewed for five years and then is to be transferred to the private sector.
Even some of the panel's own members have criticized its work. In February 2007, co-Chairman Paul Feldman left his post at the group's confidentiality, privacy and security working group, arguing that he was disappointed by the lack of substantial progress toward developing comprehensive privacy and security polices for the nationwide network.
Since the group was formed, it has met six times and has provided one set of recommendations to Leavitt. They center around: creating an electronic registration and medication history for patients; establishing secure messaging, such as e-mail, for communication between patients and their healthcare providers; creating standardized, secure records of past and current laboratory results; and enabling a transfer of health data to authorized health agencies within 24 hours.
Value-driven health care. In August 2006, Bush issued another executive order seeking to bring transparency to health care by providing reliable cost and quality information to empower patient choice. That, in turn, is designed to motivate healthcare providers and payers to see how their practices, services or plans compare with others. The order seeks to build that value-based system through the growing use of electronic health records to ensure that all health information systems can quickly and securely exchange data, and measure and publish their prices.
Federal health architecture. The architecture was established in response to a White House initiative to support federal activities in developing health IT standards. It serves to ensure that federal agencies can seamlessly exchange health data among themselves, with state, local and tribal governments, and with private healthcare organizations.
Military e-health. Thousands of military medical providers use the Defense Department's electronic health-records system and nearly 300,000 outpatient visits are recorded digitally each week. Defense's goal is to provide each patient with an updated digital medical record to be easily transferred to the Veterans Health Administration's system so patients can refill prescriptions and access health information online.
In Congress
Despite strong bipartisan support for the concept of health IT, little substantive action has been accomplished in the legislative arena. Here are the details on some past and pending proposals:
Wired for Health Care Quality Act. Passed unanimously by the Senate in the 109th Congress, the proposal would make the health IT coordinator's office permanent and would provide legislative support to many of the initiatives under way in the HHS office and elsewhere in the executive branch. The legislation also calls for developing healthcare quality measures and then reporting the quality scores of providers receiving federal funds.
Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming, the top Republican on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, along with Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., introduced an updated version of the legislation in the 110th Congress. It quickly won approval in June 2007 by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee a day after it was formally introduced.
Health IT Promotion Act. The House passed the bill by a vote of 270-148 in the 109th Congress. Like the Senate measure, this legislation would make the health IT coordinator's office permanent amid concerns that it could be eliminated when a new administration takes office. The bill also would increase pressure on federal agencies to adopt standards for sharing healthcare records and would promote research programs that use health data free of patients' identifying information.
Personalized Health Information Act. Currently pending in Congress, the bill seeks to provide financial incentives to physicians who use interactive healthcare records for Medicare and other patients. The legislation also calls on the HHS secretary to annually assess the level of patient engagement in their e-health records, as well as the cost savings resulting from the implementation of the program.
Independent Health Records Bank Act. This bill failed to make it out of committee last year. It calls for the establishment of independent, nonprofit organizations to hold Americans' e-health records. Patient fees to hold individuals' lifetime health records would support the banks. Other doctors and hospitals would release them with the patient consent.
Federal Family Health Information Technology Act. A House Government Reform subcommittee approved the measure in the 109th Congress. It would mandate the creation of electronic health records, or EHRs, for 8 million federal employees. The bill also would give federal health insurance carriers three years to develop EHRs. One year later, federal employees and their family members could obtain and control the content of the health records.
NEW FEATURE
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
