The bill would build on the proposed PRO(TECH)T Act, H.R. 6357, from the Energy and Commerce Committee and already under House consideration.
Stark is chair of the Ways and Means health subcommittee. The new legislation would retain about 70% of H.R. 6357, according to a summary of a Sept. 12 meeting between members of the HIMSS Electronic Health Records Vendors Association and Ways and Means staff. Provisions in a draft of the bill include:
* Preserving the grant and loan programs authorized in H.R. 6357.
* Directing federal officials to coordinate development of an open source electronic health record. The system could be based on the Veterans' Administration's VISTA system or developed from scratch. The system would be made available to providers at a nominal cost.
* Creating Medicare incentive payments to providers who purchase and use I.T. systems. Ways and Means staff estimates the incentives could total $4 billion. Five years after the incentive program starts, providers who have not adopted I.T. would be penalized.
* Requiring federal officials to examine the definition of "health care operations" to determine which activities can be conducted with de-identified data and which need patient consent.
* Maintaining most of H.R. 6357's provisions on privacy and security, but specifying that the accounting requirement would apply only to disclosure of information stored in an electronic health records system.
* Increasing penalties for violations of the HIPAA privacy rule and requiring a Government Accountability Office study on the "minimum necessary" standard for disclosing information.
* Authorizing state attorneys general to file lawsuits to enforce the privacy rule.
Discussions between the Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce Committees are under way over whether health I.T. legislation could reach the House floor during the rest of the congressional session this year, according to the summary.
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