It will take close collaboration between governmental bodies and private businesses to achieve interoperability across U.S. healthcare. There’s no big news in that. However, a high-powered panel fleshed out the details on the necessity Feb. 14 at HIMSS19 in Orlando.
“We’re trying to move healthcare into the modern computing environment, where there are hundreds of thousands of people capable of helping us,” said Don Rucker, MD, head of HHS’s Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC).
Sen. Tom Daschle, the former leader of the U.S. Senate majority and minority, said interoperability in healthcare is widely recognized as an essential foundation for improving quality, cost and patient experience.
“We’ve made progress,” Daschle added, “but there’s still a whole lot more to be done.”
The discussion was held to coincide with the release of a report jointly produced by the Healthcare Leadership Council and the Bipartisan Policy Center.
The report recommends several concrete steps for moving U.S. healthcare closer to realizing meaningful interoperability and information-sharing through payment incentives that focus on outcomes versus volume, contracts and other mechanisms.
The steps include strengthening the business case, improving technical infrastructure, updating policies and regulations, and addressing the need for dedicated governance and leadership.
In pursuing the latter goal, public and private sector leaders “can demonstrate leadership by focusing the U.S. healthcare system and their individual organizations on key measures of interoperability progress and the actions that can be taken to drive improvement on those measures,” the report authors write. “While the United States has made progress toward nationwide interoperability, raising awareness of progress and galvanizing private sector action will help the healthcare system overcome remaining barriers and advance efforts to improve information-sharing and interoperability.”
At the corresponding Feb. 14 HIMSS19 panel discussion, Jeff Rose, senior VP of clinical strategy at Hearst Health went so far as to say that doing the right thing “is not always financially advantageous. We can do this. But there will be give and take.”
To read the full report, click here.