President Bush issued an executive order requiring the four
agencies charged with overseeing fed programs to overhaul IT for
the exchange of health data and measurement quality.
The move is designed to increase the transparency of federal agencies that handle
veterans' health care, Medicare and federal employee health care so
patients can obtain information on quality measurements and the
price of care, according to the order.
It requires the U.S. Department of Defense, the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS), the Office of Personnel Management and the
Department of Veterans Affairs to adhere to interoperability
standards when acquiring or upgrading health IT systems that will
be used to exchange health information between agencies and with
other entities.
The standards will be set by HHS.
The agencies must also put in place programs to measure the
quality of the services they provide to beneficiaries by
aggregating claims data, according to the order. And they have been
told that the health care providers and insurance plans they
contract with also must adhere to the standards for their IT
systems.
The agencies must comply with the executive order by Jan. 1.
"People deserve to know what their health care costs, how good
it is and the choices available to them," HHS Secretary Mike
Leavitt said in a statement. "The President's action today is a
major step forward in giving consumers easy-to-use information
about the quality and price of their health care."
While national organizations comprising insurance companies and
health care providers have been working for several years to
develop ways to measure health care quality, the president's
initiative aims to build on those efforts and ultimately offer
consumers information in a single spreadsheet format, HHS
said.
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