The health information technology bill awaiting Senate passage would create several new organizations, supplant at least one existing organization and codify others in law.
The Wired for Health Care Quality Act would require the Department of Health and Human Services to designate an organization to carry out the work the Certification Commission for Health IT is doing. But it would move at least some of the work being done by the Health IT Standards Panel to a more policy-oriented -- and more governmental -- organization called the Partnership for Health Care Improvement.
The American Health Information Community, a federal advisory committee that HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt wants to move to the private sector, would keep its current federal status, although its membership would change.
Three new quality-reporting organizations would be selected to produce statistics-based reports on the quality of health care, and another organization, a nonprofit that could be the AQA alliance, would “promote the development of quality measures and provide the secretary [of HHS] with advice and recommendations on the key elements and priorities of a national system for health care performance measurement.”
HHS also would have to establish a health IT resource center. To carry out its responsibilities, the center apparently would need a larger budget than the one the center HHS’ Agency for Health Care Research and Quality now operates has.
The 80-page bill also has provisions for grants to regional health information exchanges, medical schools, health care providers and states that would make loans to providers. It authorizes the spending of up to $163 million a year on all its provisions, although Congress still would still have to appropriate the funds to HHS in the annual process.
Although the bill calls in several sections for protecting the privacy of individuals’ health records, some privacy advocates such as Dr. Deborah Peel, founder of Patient Privacy Rights, said it does not go far enough.
During committee consideration, it was amended to require that AHIC recommend policies and methods “to preserve the individual’s ability to control the acquisition, uses and disclosures of individually identifiable information.”
The bill also would extend the privacy rules of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 to health records banks and exchanges.
In keeping with current policy, it would require all federal health IT purchases to conform to the standards adopted by HHS after review by AHIC and others.
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.
