Washington-based NQF is a not-for-profit organization of industry stakeholders created to implement a national strategy for health care quality measurement and reporting. As the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee considers I.T. funding as part of an economic stimulus package, Janet Corrigan focused her testimony on three major points.
"First, federal funding to promote adoption of HIT is an essential foundation for improving health care safety, quality and affordability," she said. "Second, investments in HIT will result in far greater improvement in patient care if steps are taken to ensure that electronic health records and personal health records possess the necessary capabilities to support performance measurement, reporting and improvement. Third, HIT investments and incentives should be tied to the effective use of HIT to improve patient safety, outcomes and experience of care, not just having it."
Committee chair Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), in an opening statement, reaffirmed his longstanding support for increased federal support to accelerate use of health I.T.
"So far, the vast majority of investment in I.T. has come from the private sector," Kennedy said. "But federal grants such as those proposed in the last Congress would enable the health care industry to convert individual examples of health I.T. success into a national trend. The advantages of health I.T. must obviously be accompanied by careful protection of patient privacy. Many of us have been working with the provider and patient communities to develop strong privacy protections, including notice to patients when their medical information is wrongly disclosed. We also commend Secretary-Designate Tom Daschle's commitment to work on patient privacy, information security, and appropriate uses of health I.T. in health reform."
For full text of Corrigan's Senate testimony, click here.
--Joseph Goedert
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