Four powerful senators from both political parties have introduced their long-awaited health information technology bill in the Senate, raising hopes among some that Congress may begin to act on health IT.
The Wired for Health Care Quality Act of 2007 resembles a bill with most of the same sponsors that passed the Senate as S. 1418 in November 2005. However, it died when the House and Senate could not agree on a bill before the last Congress adjourned last year.
The sponsors this year are Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). Kennedy and Enzi are the chairman and the ranking Republican, respectively, on the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee, which has jurisdiction over the bill.
The 2005 bill had the same bipartisan sponsorship except for Hatch, who replaced former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) as a sponsor.
Several other health IT measures also have been introduced this year in the Senate, but action on any of them was regarded as unlikely until the committee leaders’ bill made its appearance. A draft was circulated within the health IT community before the introduction.
In a press release, the senators touted the potential cost savings from widespread use of health IT, saying it could reduce the cost of a family’s health insurance policy by more than $700 a year.
The bill would provide grants for low-income health care providers to buy health IT systems, for the establishment of health information exchanges and for health IT training. It also would create a state-run loan program to finance providers’ acquisition of systems.
It also would require the Department of Health and Human Services to designate an organization to develop health care performance measures and create a public/private partnership to work on health IT standards.
The new organization, to be known as the Partnership for Health Care Improvement, would recommend to HHS technical standards, implementation specifications and certification criteria for health IT. Once the federal government adopts the standards, all federal health IT purchases would have to conform to them.
The bill would codify in law the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. It also calls for strong privacy protections for health records and would require patients to be notified of privacy breaches.
Government Health IT presents Liesa Jo Jenkins, executive director of CareSpark, in this recent eSeminar, where she shared her experiences and insight into building a health information exchange that enhances community health, rewards regional collaboration and drives economic progress.
