The National Agenda
The fifth annual National Health IT Week kicked off Tuesday in Washington, D.C., and this also marks my fifth year of attendance, and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen as much attention and anticipation throughout the nation’s capital on healthcare and specifically health information technology.
As the wealth of interested and integral parties here watch the price tag for healthcare reform – what I really believe is better termed “healthcare transformation” – and have worked through the Medicare payment fixtures that has also led to the discussion and need for new payer models, I pointed out to the assembled media the inexhaustible accomplishments dedicated members of Congress and particularly members of the 21st Century Healthcare Caucus have achieved.
As Electronic Health Record Association chairman I felt proud to represent the majority of the commercially available, installed and operational EHRs in the country, as the mood here is clearly one that has moved from “if” to “when” in terms of the concrete beginnings of a national health information network.
Consider that in just the span of 16 months since the HITECH provisions of the ARRA legislation were passed, this month we are expecting the final meaningful use Stage 1 criteria for eligible professional and hospital providers as well as for EHR functionality and certification.
For those in Washington and around the country who have been directly involved in this process for many years, I will speak for them and myself in that I wish you could be here this week to feel the sense of progress being realized, tempered of course by the work to come.
It’s easy to criticize any admitted or tangible omissions still to be filled from ARRA, but there’s no denying the importance of finalizing the criteria in time for the first full incentive year of 2011.
Every time I come here I seem to have my Jimmy Stewart Mr. Smith Goes to Washington moment, or even moments, when I realize all of the hard work has a purpose, and that the politics of public policy can be a necessary means for positive change. It’s re-energizing to know that these efforts, instilled by summits like Health IT Week, are foundational aspects toward achieving the shared goals of improving the nation’s healthcare system.
As an MD interested in public policy, I commend your integration of socially-beneficial health care reform with entrepreneurship.
National health is should be reformed by Government