State lawmakers will investigate their role in health IT
By Nancy Ferris
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
The National Conference of State Legislatures has launched an 18-month-long project to examine state governments’ role in health IT and how legislatures can advance the adoption of e-health records.
The organization announced the project at its annual conference in Nashville this month. About 15 state legislators and staff members will guide the study project, known as Health IT Champions, or HITCh, said Kala Ladenheim, the project director. The team will be headed by Massachusetts State Sen. Richard Moore, Florida State Rep. Anna Benson, and Joseph Flores, fiscal analyst for the Virginia General Assembly. Moore and Benson head the health committees of their legislative bodies, Ladenheim said.
As is customary at NCSL, the project will also include private-sector sponsors, which contribute $10,000 to take part. The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society was the first to sign up, and others have followed suit, Ladenheim said. She said she is looking for more sponsors.
The project hasn’t yet decided which issues it will tackle, she said, but telehealth services, state support for health information exchanges, Medicaid, quality and patient safety, transparency, pay for performance, privacy and workforce issues are possible candidates.
“The major barriers [to health IT adoption] are not technical, they’re political,” Ladenheim said. She said legislators could be helpful in overcoming those barriers, particularly because the issues are complex and “legislators are incredibly powerful translators” of complexity.
The project team will meet for the first time in December in conjunction with an NCSL meeting in San Antonio.
NCSL also adopted a policy endorsing an interoperable national health information system.
The policy says privacy and information security are critical for a nationwide health information network. It also acknowledges the critical need for Medicaid, Medicare and other publicly financed programs to be active participants in the system, and for appropriators to make funding such a program a priority.
