So things are moving fast.
Dr. Farzad Mostashari on Sunday at HIMSS 2015 called for a “day of action” in response to the changes in Meaningful Use Stage 2. Among the lowlights for patient advocates like Mostashari: instead of requiring 5 percent of patients to “view, download or transmit” to a third party their own medical data through a portal or personal health record, just one single patient will have to do so during the reporting period.
Hours after Mostashari’s call, patient advocate Regina Holliday, former Department of Defense Chief Technology Officer Peter Levin and Mostashari, the former national health IT coordinator, were huddled in the main entryway of McCormick Place in Chicago talking strategy.
Holliday emerged from the scrum with this announcement: the tentative date for the day of action is July 4 and they’re calling it a Data Independence Day.
“We want every patient, nationwide on the Fourth of July to ask for their data,” she said.
“Why don’t we look at the wonderful history lesson of civil rights,” she said. When everyone was encouraged to vote, some states enacted barriers and loopholes to make it harder to register to vote.
“We are going to show that same experience is happening to patients” when it comes to data, Holliday said.
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.
She outlines all the plans in the video below, in which she also alludes to a run for Congress.
Things are still fluid though – and expect more: from protests at CMS meetings to events around Health Datapalooza. So stay tuned.
