In a letter to HHS Secretary-designate Tom Daschle, Rich Correll, president and CEO of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, praised President-elect Barack Obama's health care reform plan for its inclusion of health IT to improve the quality and efficiency of health care delivery, Healthcare IT News reports.
CHIME has a membership of 1,300 health care CIOs. The group advocates for the effective use of health care information management.
Correll writes, "These reforms and improvements to the health care IT system will affect patient safety, which is the ultimate goal." He added, "I'm pleased that the federal government is taking a serious interest in utilizing the tools of health information technology that will help doctors, nurses and other clinicians more effectively and efficiently do their jobs."
Recommendations
In the letter, CHIME also offered the following seven recommendations for developing the health care IT portion of Obama's health reform plan:
- Create a senior-level administration position to oversee a national health IT strategy;
- Authorize funds for a public-private sector group or groups to advise, coordinate and facilitate health IT-related initiatives within and between the federal government and private sector;
- Authorize and appropriate incentive funding to encourage hospital and physician practices that receive federal funding to adopt electronic health records;
- Support the creation of a nationwide interoperable health IT infrastructure;
- Award grants to higher learning institutions to teach and train future health care workers in health care IT practices;
- Address the health and health care needs of underserved populations through health IT; and
Support action to address variations in privacy standards among state and federal jurisdictions (Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 1/8).