In November, the Health IT Policy Committee’s www.healthit.gov report to Congress reviews the technical, operational, and financial barriers to interoperability and the role that certification needs to play to advance or hinder interoperability across various providers.
The report discusses four issues that could possibly be acted upon in the next six months and could make changes to significantly speed progress towards widespread interoperability.
The report makes three points that sets the context for the recommendations. First, interoperability appears deceptively simple but there is little agreement on the right approach and decisions will require multiple stakeholders to act in a coordinated manner.
Secondly, the long standing fee-for-service reimbursement model creates a perverse incentive to ignore information from other sources. With an increasing shift from fee-for-service reimbursement to value-based reimbursement, incentives for interoperability are beginning to shift.
Thirdly, the U.S healthcare delivery system continues to have a culture that lacks a team-based approach and too often treats data as a competitive advantage rather than as a basis for coordinated care.
Specific recommendations are to:
- Develop and implement meaningful measures of HIE-sensitive health outcomes and resource use for public reporting and payment.
- Develop and implement HIE-sensitive vendor performance measures for certification and public reporting
- Set specific HIE-sensitive payment incentives to incorporate specific performance measure criteria and develop a timeline for implementation to establish clear objectives for alternative payment models.
- Hold a summit with major stakeholders co-led by the federal government and the private sector to act on the ONC Roadmap
Go to www.healthit.gov/facas/sites/faca/files/HITPC_Final_ITF_Report_2015-12-16%20v3.pdf to view “Policy Committee Report to Congress: Challenges and Barriers to Interoperability” (December 2015).