The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) has released their annual top health IT policy recommendations to Congress. Under the guidance of the Public Policy Committee, HIMSS staff works closely with key congressional decision-makers, committees, and caucuses to advance improvements in the quality, safety and efficiency of healthcare through the use of IT and management systems.
Here are their top three health IT policy recommendations to Congress:
1. Support Robust Interoperability and Health Information Exchange
Patients and providers need interoperable health IT tools to ensure the right information is available at the right time to make better health and healthcare-related decisions. Such tools help facilities and providers gather and transmit necessary data to improve the delivery of healthcare, achieve better health outcomes, reduce costs, and address public health needs.
HIMSS specifically recommends Congress should:
– Direct HHS to review and amend the ONC Health IT Certification Program to include rigorous interoperability testing (or leverage private sector-led testing programs) to ensure consistent implementation of HIE standards and specifications in certified EHR products.
– Remove the Congressional prohibition (levied on HHS annually since 1999) on the use of federal funds for the development of a unique patient identifier standard.
– Direct HHS to study a nationwide patient matching strategy.
– Direct all federally-funded national and state government agencies to have the functionality to exchange data with healthcare institutions through means of standard language interfaces, e-data exchange, and health information exchanges.
2. Support Healthcare’s Efforts to Combat Cyber Threats
Healthcare, a critical infrastructure sector in the United States, requires meaningful, secure e-exchange of health information to improve health, provide better care, and lower costs. Healthcare providers and organizations must be equipped to defend against growing cyber threats using a consistent and effectively-implemented data security framework.
HIMSS specifically recommends Congress should:
– Direct HHS to identify, through a collaborative process with the community stakeholders, academics, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a single, voluntary, national health-specific IT data security framework that:
- Includes a common set of security practices and standards that specifically pertain to a range of healthcare organizations;
- Supports voluntary adoption and implementation efforts to improve cybersecurity safeguards;
- Creates a more uniform technical landscape; and is,
- Consistently updated and applicable to the range of healthcare organizations.
– Create a single information sharing pipeline of actionable cyber threat intelligence from the government to the private sector in (near) real time, through a no-cost mechanism.
- Congress should direct a study on the most appropriate policies and procedures for Federal agencies to adopt and implement for transfer of cyber threat intelligence to the private sector such that the information may be shared in real time or near real time with healthcare organizations.
- The study should assess which Federal agency or other entity may be best suited to be the central conduit to facilitate the cyber threat intelligence information sharing.
3. Expand Access to Telehealth Services for Medicare Beneficiaries
HIMSS urges Congress to amend current law, and take steps to require CMS to remove barriers to deployment, and encourage broader types of technologies that will improve access and quality, and reduce cost.
Specifically, Congress should:
1. Amend the allowable originating sites of care beyond those currently stipulated by CMS to include interactions with patients from wherever the patient is located, including the home, where cost-effective and clinically-appropriate.
2. Eliminate the geographic restrictions on telehealth (i.e., currently not allowed in metropolitan statistical areas. Currently open only to Health Professional Shortage Areas).
3. Allow expanded use of “store and forward capability” to aid long-term passive monitoring of chronic diseases (i.e., currently, only Alaska and Hawaii may use for federal demonstration projects).
4. Expand modalities beyond live (real-time) voice and video to active monitoring between clinicians, patients and care providers (i.e., Asynchronous vs. Synchronous).
5. Update Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) and Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) to cover in-home monitoring or clinician/patient non-centralized exchanges, including shared decision making.
6. Encourage nationwide efforts to harmonize federal and state efforts to address the challenges of licensing clinicians to serve patients across traditional state boundaries.
