At a Senate Finance Health Subcommittee hearing this week, witnesses told lawmakers that health IT is critical to improving long-term care, Modern Healthcare reports.
Ray Scheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association, said that recent efforts to upgrade the health care system will provide a window of opportunity to long-term care improvements.
According to Scheppach, quality measurements, standards and processes designed to coordinate care could lead to the creation of new reimbursement models that more effectively reward long-term care providers and better tailor care to patients.
He said that federal and state initiatives to create and implement interoperable health IT and health data exchange systems "will be essential in reaching this goal."
Joshua Wiener -- senior fellow and program director for aging, disability and long-term care at RTI International -- said cost-effective plans to boost quality in long-term care services already exist. He said such proposals include increasing support for integrated data systems that cut across health care provider settings.
Senate Finance Health Subcommittee Chair Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) scheduled the hearing to draw attention to the lack of progress made in the last 20 years to improve long-term care benefits and services (Lubell, Modern Healthcare, 3/26).