Highlights:
- Pew Charitable Trusts penned a letter to President-elect Joe Biden and his administration to advance health IT, potentially within the first 100 days of taking office. Specifically, Pew called for a focus on health data exchange and interoperability that can help mitigate the current COVID-19 crisis. “To slow the growth of new cases and deaths in the short term and ensure the success of a vaccination drive in 2021, the incoming administration should focus on optimizing the use and exchange of available data to ensure that public health authorities get the information they need to effectively manage the COVID-19 response,” wrote Ben Moscovitch, project director of Health Information Technology at Pew.
- Moscovitch pointed at the information blocking regulations that are a part of the 21st Century Cures Act to help this issue. If certain demographic information is not reported, fines of up to $1 million could occur. “The Biden administration could use this authority to require that health care providers include complete demographic data, such as contact information, when ordering tests from labs,” Moscovitch recommended. “That’s critical because labs cannot share complete data with public health authorities if they have not received it in the first place.”
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