As the news traveled across healthcare circles on The ONC’s ambitious goal for full-scale interoperablity by 2017, reaction was largely positive and of encouragement from several stakeholders, although what much of the private sector thinks remains unclear.
Prominent groups such as CHIME and the Healthcare Leadership Council were supportive of the draft, which will now go under public comment for the next 60 days.
“The benefits that will accompany full interoperability are undeniable,” Mary Grealy, president of the Healthcare Leadership Council, said in a statement. “Secure data sharing that protects patient privacy while making vital information accessible system-wide will strengthen healthcare quality and cost-efficiency while enabling new breakthroughs in medical research.”
Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Woman and Families, had this take:
“The draft Interoperability Roadmap released today by the Office of the National Coordinator is a very welcome, very promising, and very smart next step in the effort to create a health information technology system that will make health care more patient- and family-centered in this country. We are especially pleased that the new roadmap focuses on interoperability not just among providers, but also patients and their family caregivers, recognizing them as equal partners in the continuum of care and in electronic access to and use of health information. Only by doing that will we make health IT the engine of successful reform it can and should be.”
And this from eHealth Initiative CEO Jennifer Covich Bordenick:
“The HHS interoperability roadmap announced today is an important step forward for all of us committed to a data-driven approach to improving health care. If the public and private sectors will work together on solving the interoperability challenge, we have a chance to significantly improve the practice of medicine and, most importantly, the health of patients across this country. I applaud HHS for its leadership in this area, and I look forward to partnering with the agency on this important initiative.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Dr. William Bria, a veteran physician informaticist, told Modern Healthcare that the inclusion of patient data with public health officials was a positive development that could permit patients access to their own health data on mobile devices. “It strikes me that it’s way past time to give the American public access to their own information and in a way they can actually use (it),” Bria, president of the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems, told the magazine. “They are the key customer that’s really been left. It’s overdue.”
We’ll update this with more responses as we get them, but, again, not much noise came out of hospital systems or CIOs, who are likely still processing the lengthy draft. Big systems like Kaiser Permanente, Community Health Systems, Hospital Corporation of America and the like will be key factors if the integration of EHRs is to be achieved on a large scale — that is, if they’re willing to exchange data.
