The House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittees recently held a hearing to discuss the details of the public policy changes that are needed in order to speed up the potential progress of health information interoperability.
Neil de Crescenzo, president and CEO of Change Healthcare, testified at the hearing. He stated that health data interoperability needs the public policy changes to alter the U.S. health care system. Currently, public policies block the progress that could be made.
De Crescenzo testified for the Healthcare Leadership Council, which is a partnership between chief executives from companies that are based in all of the U.S. health sectors.
Currently, Change Healthcare has the biggest financial as well as administrative health care network within the U.S. It joins an estimated 5,000 hospitals, 750,000 physicians and 1,200 public and private payers into a single unit. Furthering this and other networks and their progress with interoperable health information depend on changing public policies.
De Crescenzo stated that the network needs support from updated federal and state data privacy laws, abuse statues, federal fraud and firm deadlines. Creating barriers to sharing health data only contradicts the progress that health companies claim to be seeking.
“Data interoperability can strengthen care coordination -- enabling providers, payers, pharmacists, laboratories and others to be on the same page in treating a patient,” he said. “It can boost progress toward an outcome-driven, value-based payment system to replace the outdated and inefficient fee-for-service status quo while also improving our quality measurement capabilities. With interoperability and access to clinical and claims data, we can accelerate medical research and give hospitals and physicians’ offices real-time access to comparative effectiveness findings. An interoperable system can improve care to rural and underserved areas of the country through improved telehealth and remote patient monitoring.”
