Today, about 90 percent or more of the nation’s hospitals and physicians have adopted EHRs with digital health exploding beyond the use of EHRs. This includes using data to assess, manage, and predict health outcomes requiring the use of algorithms and artificial intelligence along with the use of other new electronic methods to more effectively deliver care and manage health.
Janet Marchibroda, Director for Health Innovation Initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center https://bipartisanpolicy.org and Joel White, Executive Director for Health IT Now https://healthnow.org, shared ideas and thoughts at a panel discussion on February 27, 2018, held to release the report titled, “Role of Government in Health IT and Digital Health”.
The report makes recommendations on how to develop a more modern health IT and digital health framework and how to explore and promote a new vision for health IT policy as technology continues to move forward in the coming years.
BPC and “Health IT Now” began developing the report by convening a Work Group consisting of nearly 50 individuals from a number of organizations representing clinicians, patients, hospitals, and technology companies.
In-depth discussions were held to assess the current regulatory landscape, identify the most pressing needs of users, and to develop consensus recommendations for the future role of government in this new technology era existing in an evolving delivery environment
Specifically, the report recommends that the federal government’s future role in health IT and digital health should:
- Provide assurance that core consumer protections are met
- Recognize private sector standards and promote their adoption
- Convene experts and stakeholders to identify issues and challenges that need to be addressed
- Fund research and development activities to continue advancement in the field
The report also suggests that technology needs to be user-friendly, safe, secure, interoperable, easy to access, and flexible enough to meet the changing needs of consumers in an evolving healthcare system.
Keynoter Don Rucker MD, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, at HHS speaking at the event explained, “Health IT is part of a broader economic system. The question consumers always ask, “What are we getting for our dollar in healthcare?”
Dr Rucker continued to say, “Practicing physicians spend about half of their workdays on EHRs and desk work including 37 percent of their time in the exam room with patients, but one to two hours each night are devoted mostly to doing tasks using an EHR. As a result, physician practices dealing with these requirements often are faced with lower productivity, higher costs, and physician burnout.
He reports that the ONC is committed to implementing the provisions in the 21st Century Cures Act, work with CMS on regulatory issues, develop a broad sense of usability and interoperability encourage data to be connected to smart phones, address the burden of documentation found in physicians’ offices, maintain easier ways to find information, deal with security and fraud issues, and lastly, establish high quality robust networks able to talk to each other.
As Dr. Rucker explained, “An Application Programming Interface (API) is a code that allows two software programs to communicate with each other. Every time someone uses Facebook or checks information on their smart phone or laptop, an API is used. However, communication between software components must utilize standards if their use is to be successful. If API standards are established, then the marketplace will successfully open up.”
To discuss what is actually going on organizations related to the use of health IT and digital health, Janet Marchibroda and Joel White moderated a panel discussion that included Jim N. Jirjis, MD, Vice President and Chief Health Information Officer, HCA, Lucia Savage Chief Privacy and Regulatory Officer at Omada Health, Steven Waldren Director, Alliance for eHealth Innovation, at the American Academy of Family Physicians, John Wylam, Manager for Advocacy, at the National MS Society, and Stephanie Zarenba, Director of Government Affairs, at athenahealth.
Some of the thoughts and questions discussed by the panel included:
- How the aging of the population is causing interest in healthcare
- How large health systems can get their technology to talk to each other
- The need for big investments in health IT
- The public and private sectors need to work together while focusing on outcomes
- Give facetime back to doctors and patients,
- Develop better analytical skills in order to deal effectively with data
- Develop quality reporting tools
- Develop effective and affordable ways to make data more secure
- Examine the regulatory framework
In general, the role for Government is to concentrate on providing high value care which will require the private sector to express their needs and work together to advocate for a more modern health IT system and a digital health framework to protect consumers, reduce the burden for users and developers, and at the same time, accelerate innovation now and in the future.
Go to https://bipartisanpolicy.org/library/health-it-and-digital-health to download the report.