HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt and interim National Coordinator for Health IT Robert Kolodner on Thursday discussed health IT progress, President Bush's commitment to interoperable electronic health records and the importance of privacy protections at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society's annual conference, Healthcare IT News reports.
Leavitt said health IT enables the other three "cornerstones" of a value-driven health care system, which he said are "quality measures, building episodes of care, and aligning incentives to choose high-quality, low-cost providers."
He cited examples of health IT progress, including the creation of the American Health Information Community, which has seen results in secure e-mail between patients and physicians, the electronic collection of registration data, and product certification from the Certification Commission for Health IT. Leavitt also lauded President Bush's August 2006 executive order requiring federal agencies by the beginning of 2007 to purchase health IT products that are certified and moving toward interoperability.
"[O]ur goal isn't just to digitize health care data, it's to create a 'system' out of a sector," he said, adding that he envisions a system based on competition through quality, rather than through prices.
Kolodner discussed the progress of privacy and security protections. He also stressed the importance of the upcoming trial implementations of health data networks, which will enable patients to control their health data (Beaudoin, Healthcare IT News, 3/1).
Kolodner said the trial networks will enable people "to decide how they view, store and control access to their own information." Bidders will be encouraged to offer consumers the ability to correct errors in their health records. Kolodner said the government also wants bidders to include safety net providers in their proposals (McCloskey, Government Health IT, 3/1).
"Individuals will also be able to correct errors in their health information," he said. The correction process initially will be manual but "will hopefully be automated" in the future. Kolodner said he expects this spring to make more announcements about the trials, and requests for proposals will be unveiled in April (Healthcare IT News, 3/1).