Stark Introduces Health IT Bill
Just before Washington's collective attention turned to inaugural festivities, House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Fortney (Pete) Stark, D-Calif., dropped legislation aimed at overhauling the U.S. healthcare system through advances in technology. Stark introduced a similar bill in the 110th Congress -- much of which was culled from a proposal that emerged from the House Energy and Commerce Committee. His bill would codify the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology within the Health and Human Services Department; create a more transparent process for the development of health IT standards by the end of 2009; and establish a voluntary certification process for health IT products.
The bill also provides immediate funding for health IT infrastructure, training, dissemination of best practices, telemedicine, inclusion of health technology in clinical education, and state grants to promote the use of electronic medical records. In addition, the legislation provides financial incentives through the Medicare and Medicaid programs to encourage doctors and hospitals to adopt and use certified e-health systems. Physicians would be eligible for as much as $65,000 for showing they are meaningfully using health IT and hospitals would be eligible for several million dollars. Incentive payments would continue for several years but would be phased out over time.
On the privacy front, Stark's bill would establish a federal breach notification requirement for health IT and would let patients request an audit trail showing all disclosures of their health information made through an electronic record. The legislation would change existing laws to include new entities that were not contemplated when federal privacy rules were written as well as entities that do work on behalf of providers and insurers. The measure also would ban the sale of an individual's health information without their authorization and would require providers to attain authorization from a patient in order to use their health IT for marketing and fundraising activities.
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