Legislators Scrambling to Establish Electronic Health Information Exchanges
Sen. Joe Paskvan, D-Fairbanks, Alaska, pushed a bill that would establish an electronic health information exchange system that would draw on federal funds.
In response to President Obama’s mandate for electronic health records (EHR) for all patients, SMART Association, Inc. and LifeMed Card, Inc. (“SMART”) announce they have released their LifeMed™ Smart Card Platform software for EHRs.
Currently, healthcare information management focuses on exchanging patients’ electronic medical records over the Internet to various HIEs and Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIOs). From there, networks are supposed to connect and aggregate information into a National Health Information Network (NHIN). Therefore, correctly identifying patients while protecting their privacy is a daunting task. Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance (http://www.smartcardalliance.org), states, “Secure identity smart cards should be top of mind for any government policy makers looking to improve the efficiency of healthcare information.”
The blog at Health IT Politics reviewed interviews conducted at the WHCC, World Healthcare Congress, (www.worldhealthcare.org). “Dr. Davis reviewed various metrics of population health across nations. Apparently, EMR/Health IT adoption is at 28% in the U.S. versus 98% in the Netherlands. More importantly, only 30% of U.S. physicians have pay-for-performance incentives. Dr. Davis cited Denmark as good example of EMR utilizations. Denmark has a single Health Information Exchange for citizens’ data. This data can be accessed by a physician through a portal.”
