What HIMSS Told Congress

This week, a House subcommittee held a hearing entitled “Is ‘Meaningful Use’ Delivering Meaningful Results?: An Examination of Health  Information Technology Standards and Interoperability.”  The hearing follows a recent furor over Meaningful Use’s benefits, in which HHS head Kathleen Sebelius was written a stinging letter by a quartet of Congressman arguing that the program might not be pulling its weight.

Lots of interesting discussion took place at the hearing — see a report from the indefatigable HIT blogger and expert Brian Ahier for more background — but for the purposes of this item, I’m focusing on what HIMSS had to say.

HIMSS, which obviously has a massive stake in the topic discussed, is a big Meaningful Use fan. The trade group argues that “Meaningful Use and the Stage 2 regulations allow the healthcare community to continue the necessary steps to ensure health information technology will support the transformation of healthcare delivery in the United States.”

Not surprisingly, HIMSS showed up in full color at the hearing, ready to defend MU and the progress of health IT generally. HIMSS offered Congress seven recommendations as to how to keep the MU train moving, Ahier reports. Here’s my favorites:

  1. Direct the administration to initiate an appropriate study of a nationwide patient data matching strategy with a report back to Congress.
  2. Support harmonization of federal and state privacy laws and regulations to encourage the exchange of health information across health systems, payers, and vendor systems.
  3. Continue to support and sponsor pilot programs addressing the collection, analysis and management of clinical data for quality reporting purposes to assist providers and provider organizations make informed decisions for public health, patient care and business purposes.
  4. Preclude any additional delay in the nationwide implementation of ICD-10, International Classification of Diseases beyond the current October 1, 2014 deadline.

Other than the ICD-10 recommendation, which will probably be battled down to the last millisecond by some groups, I’m betting most readers would consider these to be reasonable steps. But I could be wrong. And I don’t see a lot here on the nitty-gritty of interoperability, which was the focus of the Congressmen’s ire in the first  place.  Folks, what would you add to/subtract from this list?

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

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