State governments are leading the way to promote adoption of interoperable health care information technology systems, says Lori Evans, deputy director of the New York Department of Health. In part, the states are stepping up to fill a leadership vacuum in the federal government, she contended.
Evans, who leads the departments Office of Health Information Technology
Transformation, spoke at the American Health Information Management Association
Annual Conference in Seattle. She told attendees that at least 35 states have
initiatives in various stages of maturity.
New York, for example, is funding up to $200 million to help providers
adopt I.T. and build health information exchanges. In November, the state
will publish policies covering a variety of issues that are required to advance
interoperable HIEs across New York. The state health department is
building its own infrastructure to communicate with HIEs, the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, and other stakeholders.
A variety of other state measures are in progress across the nation.
Minnesota has mandated interoperable electronic health records by 2015. A
California executive order requires e-prescribing by 2010. Rhode Island recently
enacted a law to establish and fund a statewide HIE. Still, there remain
thousands of silos of health information across the nation and no consensus on
how to communicate among them, Evans said. And thats got to change, she added.
Health information is a public good, it is not a private access.
States can go a long way toward fostering consensus by agreeing on
governance issues and setting policies on consumer protections,
interoperability, access rights, responses to breaches, and audits, Evans
said.
To a small degree, thats already happening in New York, she noted. In
two regions of the state, two governing entities in each region are sharing the
same HIE.





















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