IT Consulting from the Trenches

COMING SOON: HEALTHCARE REFORM IN THE NEXT FOUR YEARS!

And that’s regardless of who becomes the next President. I don’t think I’m being overly optimistic since the signs are there.

The momentum that started with HIPAA, the escalating spiral of healthcare costs, and the fact that about one out of every six Americans does not have adequate health coverage have made healthcare reform a priority in the next administration.

According to the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based private foundation whose mission is to promote a high-performing healthcare system:

In 2007, nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults, or an estimated 116 million people, struggled to pay medical bills, went without needed care because of cost, were uninsured for a time, or were underinsured (i.e., were insured but not adequately protected from high medical expenses).

(Losing Ground: How the Loss of Adequate Health Insurance is Burdening Working Families, August 2008)

Both Democrats and Republicans agree on the objectives but differ on the ways to achieve those objectives. Nevertheless the following bills are actively being legislated. They’re listed in the approximate order of their progress. A Senate bill is abbreviated as SB and a bill from the House of Representatives is abbreviated HR. Clicking on a link will open a new tab or window containing the PDF copy of the document.

SB 2408/HR 4295: The Medicare Electronic Medication and Safety Protection Act.

As it’s currently written, this act has both carrot and stick. On the one hand it encourages physicians to use e-prescriptions by offering a bonus payment equivalent to one percent of every claim submitted that is based on an e-prescription. On the other, it would impose a pre-claim financial penalty on physicians who still hand write prescriptions in 2011.

This bill was introduced in December 2007 by Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) and co-sponsored by Republicans John Ensign (Nev.), Norm Coleman (Minn.), John Cornyn (Tex.), and fellow Democrats Charles Schumer (N.Y.), Richard Durbin (Ill.), and Maria Cantwell (Wash.).

HR 4296 is the House version of the former and is called the Medicare Electronic Medication and Safety Protection (E-MEDS) Act of 2007.

It supplements HR 4295 by requiring physicians that participate in Medicare to e-prescribe.

HR 2991: The Independent Health Record Trust Act.

This could be the big one! It requires the national healthcare system to provide for the establishment of a nationwide health information technology network.

There are two more bills winding their way through the Senate and the House, respectively. These bills elaborate further on the need to develop a national interoperable health information network.

The Senate bill is SB 1693: The Wired for Healthcare Quality Act.

The House bill is HR 6357: PRO(TECH) Act of 2008: Promotion of Health Information Technology.

Finally, credit must also go to the federal government for actively working to develop the network of the future. Click here to see the program's status.