With the stroke of the presidential pen, health policy has been changed for more than a third of all Americans. A recent press release from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) acknowledges what the Institute for Health Freedom reported a year ago: President Bush’s Executive Order (#13410) simplifies the sharing and tracking of electronic medical records for all health-care providers who receive federal funds.
Last September IHF noted that “…President Bush is moving forward with promoting ‘interoperable’ electronic medical records. In August he signed an executive order, ‘Promoting Quality and Efficient Health Care in Federal Government Administered or Sponsored Health Care Programs,’ requiring agencies and their contractors to meet ‘interoperability’ standards for health data.”
Interoperability is defined as “the ability to communicate and exchange data…with different information technology systems, software applications, and networks in various settings…”
HHS states, “In its first year, the President’s Executive Order has begun to have a culture-changing effect in the health care sector….By mandating action for federal agencies, the order applied to a substantial portion of the U.S. health care market.”
According to HHS, the four goals of the Executive Order are to:
(1) Connect the nation’s health-care “system” by employing interoperable health information technology;
(2) Measure and make available data on the quality of health-care services;
(3) Measure and make available price information on the costs of health-care products and services; and
(4) Arrange incentives so that payers, providers, and patients “benefit” when health-care services are “focused on achieving the best value of health care at the lowest cost.”
Regarding the first goal, HHS notes that its “Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)…has successfully piloted models for a Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN). Using the internet, the NHIN will be a network of networks that will connect health information exchanges in different markets to enable the secure and confidential sharing of health information across the health care system. In fiscal year 2008, ONC will begin trial implementations of competing prototypes that have been demonstrated as viable models for the NHIN.”
HHS further states, “Federal departments and agencies are coordinating and adopting consistent contract language that will require the use of newly developed and soon-to-be recognized interoperability standards. Beginning in their next contracting cycle, agency contracts will include this language, requiring the use, where available, of health IT that meets recognized interoperability standards….More than 800 employers and over 20 states have recognized this Executive Order through signed public declarations supporting the four cornerstones. As a result, more than 100 million insured American lives are now impacted by the goals laid out in the Executive Order.”