The Capitol Hill “Steering Committee on Telehealth and Healthcare Informatics kick-off program “Health IT 101” held for new and returning Congressional Health Technology staffers brought them up to speed on many of the fast evolving policy issues in the field of telemedicine, telehealth, and health IT. Some of the leading trade organizations presented their specialized viewpoints on some of the health technology issues facing the healthcare and medical community.
The moderator for the event, Steve Redhead Specialist in Health Policy for the Congressional Research Service, emphasized that health IT issues are very important to the staff in both the House and Senate and how essential it is for staffers to understand the essential role that health technology plays in our society today and will continue to do so in the future.
Neal Neuberger, Executive Director of the Institute for e-Health Policy for the HIMSS Foundation, recounted how for the past twenty years, the Steering Committee has presented more than 190 educational session and healthcare IT demonstrations for members of Congress, congressional staff, key federal agency officials, and industry professionals.
He also discussed how a number of agencies are involved in telemedicine, telehealth, and health IT. Agencies within HHS such as AHRQ HRSA, CMS, NIH, along with NIST and NTIA, plus DOD, VA, USDA, FDA, and FEMA’s emergency management continue to be very involved with health technologies.
He added, the field faces a number of issues involving research, privacy and security, expanding broadband to many new areas of the country, reimbursement, licensure, and grants. He noted that effectively dealing with these issues would not have been possible without the billions allotted to the field of health IT and related technologies in the past few years.
According to Richard Hodge, Senior Director, for Congressional Affairs HIMSS, HIMSS analytics data reports that the HITECH portion of the 2009 stimulus law is achieving intended results and encouraging increased implementation and meaningful use of EHRs. As recently reported, more than 340,000 eligible professionals, hospitals and Critical Access Hospitals have registered for the EHR Incentive Program.
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), an organization with 1,400 CIO members is very involved in extending Stage 2 Meaningful Use as explained by Sharon Canner, Senior Director Public Policy, for CHIME. She reports that CHIME wants to push back the start date of Stage 3 Meaningful Use to 2017. This will give hospitals and providers an extra year in Stage 2 if they began Meaningful Use Stage 1 in 2012 or 2013.
Shortly after ONC and CMS released a joint statement in December to push back the start date of Stage 3 Meaningful use to 2017, CHIME took action and sent a letter to the Secretary of HHS reiterating support for an extension of the 2014 reporting period. The December announcement stated that the Notice for the Proposed Rulemaking for Stage 3 is due to be released in fall 2014 with the final rule expected in spring 2015.
Allison Viola Vice President, Policy and Government Affairs for the eHealth Initiative commented that although much has been done to support interoperability, much more needs to be done to implement standards. Meaningful Use includes standards and specifications to improve interoperability by requiring providers to exchange structured care summaries.
Representing the interests of the American Telemedicine Association, Gary Capistrant, Senior Director, Public Policy for ATA, told the staffers that telemedicine and telehealth uses video conferencing, store and forward, and remote patient monitoring.
As Capistrant reported, ATA is actively supporting the “Telehealth Enhancement Act of 2013” (H.R 3306) introduced by Representative Gregg Harper, Mike Thompson, Devin Nunes, and Peter Welch to build on existing payment innovations.
The bill adjusts Medicare home health payments to account for remote patient monitoring and expands coverage to all critical access and sole community hospitals regardless of metropolitan status. The package also covers home-based video services for hospice care, home dialysis, and homebound beneficiaries.
The ICD-9 transition to ICD-10 is an important issue as explained by Margarita L. Valdez, Director for Congressional Relations for the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA). The need to transition from ICD-9 is vital since ICD-10 is the classification system currently being used in the majority of the world. But as of today, the U.S is the only industrialized nations not using the ICD-10 based classification system.
Valdez said, “It is important for the U.S. to change to ICD-10 in order for the healthcare industry to accurately measure quality of care since ICD-10 would add precision to the coding system which is greatly needed. It is difficult to evaluate the outcomes of new procedures and emerging healthcare conditions when there are not precise codes.”
She added, “The move to ICD-10 will enable improved clinical decision-making, track public health issues, conduct more advanced medical research, identify fraud and abuse, and design a payment system to ensure that services are appropriately paid.”
For more information, go to www.e-healthpolicy.org or email Arnol Simmons at asimmons@e-healthpolicy.org or call 703-562-8826.