June 2005

 Mission:  to transform the health care system through information and technology to improve patient safety and health care quality, lower costs, and coordinate care.

 

IN THIS ISSUE:

 

1.  House Approves Full Funding for ONCHIT and AHRQ

 

2.  AHRQ Funds Patient Safety Projects

 

3.  Murphy, Kennedy Seek Cosponsors for Legislation

 

4.  Senate Health IT Legislation Mill Heats Up

 

5.  HHS Releases RFPs to Drive EHR Adoption

 

6.  Formation of the American Health Information Community (AHIC)

7.  ONCHIT RFI Response Released

 

8.  MedPAC Announces New Commissioners

 

9.  Alliance To Develop Electronic Information Exchange Rules

 

10.  IHI's Promising Practice:Breathing Safely in the ICU

 

 

House Approves Full Funding for ONCHIT and AHRQ

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved full funding for the fiscal year 2006 Administration budget request for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology  (ONCHIT), at $75 million, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) IT demonstrations at $50 million.  These funds will help the Secretary of Health and Human Services to provide leadership toward achieving the goal of electronic health records for all Americans within 10 years and set in motion a positive change in healthcare delivery in the U.S. 

 

The Senate Appropriations Committee is slated to take up its own version of the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education Appropriations bill after the July 4 recess, making the next two weeks a key time to ask Senators to support full funding for health IT and health care quality initiatives.  Once the full Senate passes the bill, appropriators from the House and Senate will have to work out a compromise between the two chambers' versions.

 

AHRQ Funds Patient Safety Projects

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality announced awards of over $8 million to help fund 15 projects that are designed to help clinicians, facilities, and patients implement evidence-based patient safety practices.  Over half the projects will focus on reducing medication errors.  A key component of the projects is the development of a set of free, publicly available toolkits for healthcare providers to share lessons learned on how to best implement patient safety practices.  The health systems and universities that received grants are located in Phoenix; Denver; Rochester, NY; Boston; Milwaukee; Cedar Rapids, IA; Omaha, NE; Portland, OR; Cincinnati; Chicago; Pittsburgh; Nashville, TN; Atlanta; and Seattle.

 

Murphy, Kennedy Seek Cosponsors for Legislation

As the 21st Century Health Information Act (H.R. 2234) shapes the health IT debate on Capitol Hill (see summary of recent Senate legislation below), the sponsors, Caucus Co-Chairmen Murphy and Kennedy, continue to seek cosponsors for the legislation.  The Murphy-Kennedy bill (click here for a summary) has 44 supporting organizations including such diverse health care stakeholders as the American College of Physicians, the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Health Care Association, Families USA, IBM, HIMSS, Intel, and the American Academy of Family Physicians.  The bill's sponsors encourage supporters to make calls and emails to Representatives urging them to cosponsor the Murphy-Kennedy bill, H.R. 2234.

 

Senate Health IT Legislation Mill Heats Up

During the last month, the Senate has seen the introduction of three different health IT bills, with a fourth expected soon. 

 

Senators Bill Frist (R-TN) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) have introduced legislation building on the 21st Century Health Information Act introduced by Caucus Co-Chairs Murphy and Kennedy last month.  In addition to incorporating many of the Murphy-Kennedy bill's provisions designed to foster the development of regional health information networks and adoption of health IT by providers, the Frist-Clinton legislation (S.1262) contains quality provisions designed to drive the transition to value-based purchasing in health care, provides statutory authority for the Office of the National Health IT Coordinator and some of its recent RFPs (see below), and creates a permanent working group to help establish interoperability standards.  Senator Frist's staff has said that the Senator hopes the bill will be reported out of committee before the August recess.

 

Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) also introduced a health IT bill, S. 1227, focusing on providers.  The legislation envisions a grant program to be administered by the Department of Health and Human Services to infuse almost $4 billion in federal funding into the provider community to encourage adoption of information systems and services.   Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CN) also recently introduced health IT legislation, S. 1223, and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-WY) and Ranking Member Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) are expected to announce a bill this week.

 

HHS Releases RFPs  to Drive EHR Adoption

Dr. David Brailer, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, culminated a year's worth of work with the announcement of four requests for proposal (RFP) to lay the groundwork for a national health IT strategy.  HHS will use the contracting process to address fundamental issues critical to achieving an interoperable national health information network and driving EHR adoption. The RFPs are as follows:

Formation of the American Health Information Community (AHIC)
Michael Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services, announced a new initiative at the HIMSS Summit in New York: the formation of the American Health Information Community (AHIC).  The AHIC will serve as a national standards and policy body to make recommendations to the federal government on how to achieve interoperable electronic health records that assure privacy and security. It will be chaired by Secretary Leavitt and include up to 17 commissioners chosen by the Secretary and nominated from a wide constituency, including clinicians, consumer groups, vendors, and state and federal government representatives.

 

ONCHIT RFI Response Released

The Department of Health and Human Services has released its report on the compilation of responses to the request for information (RFI) on the National Health Information Network (NHIN). The Office of the National Coordinator oversaw an interagency review of the 512 responses that were received in January 2005 from a broad spectrum of healthcare information technology and other industry groups. The report, is entitled Summary of Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) Request for Information (RFI) Responses. An accompanying press release was made available by HHS.

 

MedPAC Announces New Commissioners
Two new members have been appointed to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC).  Jennie Chin Hansen, R.N., M.S.N., member, American
Association of Retired Persons (AARP) Board of Directors, and Nancy M. Kane, D.B.A., professor of management, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health have been appointed to the Commission.  The following members have also been reappointed to the Commission: Nancy-Ann DeParle, J.D., senior advisor, JP Morgan Partners, LLC and adjunct professor of health care systems, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; David F. Durenberger, chairman and chief executive officer, National Institute of Health Policy; and Nicholas J. Wolter, M.D., chief executive officer, Deaconess Billings Clinic.  The Commission is made up of 17 members with their appointments staggered.  They are appointed to 3-year terms.  MedPAC was established to advise Congress on issues affecting the Medicare program.  The Commission's next meeting is scheduled for September 8 - 9.

 

Alliance To Develop Electronic Information Exchange Rules

From iHealthBeat:

 

An alliance of more than 50 medical societies, insurers, hospitals and technology companies has launched an initiative to develop information-exchange rules to allow physicians to electronically submit insurance eligibility inquiries, American Medical News reports.

 

The initiative aims to standardize and provide a minimum set of eligibility and benefit information to physicians, said Robin Thomashauer, executive director of the not-for-profit Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare, which is leading the effort. The effort also could build the foundation for the industry to develop information-exchange rules for transactions such as precertification and claims status inquiry, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians, which is participating in the initiative.

 

"We are optimistic that the next step in this endeavor will yield accurate, real-time information detailing patient-specific cost-sharing responsibilities and health plan payments to physicians," said Dr. J. James Rohack, chair of the American Medical Association, a member of the alliance. Other members of the alliance include Aetna, the American College of Physicians, CMS, Humana, Kaiser Permanente and WellPoint.

 

The alliance aims to develop and test the voluntary rules by the end of next year, according to the CAQH. Insurers then would have to ensure their legacy systems can provide and make their data available, while vendors would have to make sure their practice-management systems and clearinghouse services integrate the rules into their systems, American Medical News reports. Vendors have said they would include the rules in new versions of their software, and physicians would get the updated version as part of their annual support and maintenance contract, Thomashauer said (Chin, American Medical News, 6/27).

IHI's Promising Practice: Breathing Safely in the ICU
Historically, it has seemed almost inevitable for critically ill patients in a hospital's intensive care unit to develop infections and serious complications. Fortunately this is changing. In one dramatic example, international quality teams are demonstrating that, by following a clear, interdependent set of steps in treating patients on breathing machines, deadly ventilator-acquired pneumonia (VAP) can be virtually eliminated.

Read more at
http://www.ihi.org/IHI/Topics/Improvement/ImprovementMethods/Literature/BreathingSafelyintheICU.htm.

 

The House 21st Century Health Care Caucus thanks the following organizations for their contributions to this newsletter:

HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) is the healthcare industry's membership organization exclusively focused on providing leadership for the optimal use of healthcare information technology and management systems for the betterment of human health.  HIMSS frames and leads healthcare public policy and industry practices through its advocacy, educational and professional development initiatives designed to promote information and management systems' contributions to ensuring quality patient care.  On the web at www.himss.org. (Items 1-2, 4-8)

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is a not-for-profit organization leading the improvement of health care throughout the world.  Founded in 1991 and based in Boston, MA, IHI is a catalyst for change, cultivating innovative concepts for improving patient care and implementing programs for putting those ideas into action.  Thousands of health care providers participate in IHI's groundbreaking work. To find out more, go to www.ihi.org. (Item 10)