Highlights:
- The healthcare industry has come a long way with regard to interoperability, especially with the new rules proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services, set to take effect April 5. These rules aim to provide patients with unprecedented access to their data. The industry has focused on enabling the basic exchange of health records between providers and made great progress, but the connective tissue that enables data management — including matching and cleaning data — is lacking, she said. And it’s the smaller providers that are being left behind.
- Looking ahead, care quality measurement needs to be automated within the EHR and providers should get free access to information that is already mapped in accordance with data standards, Mostashari said. The technical tools needed to push interoperability forward already exist, but the regulatory landscape needs to catch up, said Donald Trigg, president of North Kansas City, Missouri-based Cerner, during the session.
- The government is now both the biggest healthcare regulator in the country and the biggest payer. This means it is in a unique position to use health IT certification and provider reimbursement to help create the interoperability architecture that is necessary for the coming decade, Trigg said.
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