Get Real Health not only builds solutions to empower patients, we advocate for their right to access health data in a way that makes it usable and relevant.
As such, we recently co-authored a letter to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) stating the urgent need for improved laws regarding interoperability, information blocking, and American citizen’s rights to access their personal health data.
Nothing is more gratifying than to be heard and enact change.
Together with our client Immune Deficiency Foundation (IDF), Get Real Health was a catalyst for the drafting of a bill entitled Bipartisan Legislation to Improve Health Information Technology for Patients and Families.
The Senate Health Committee bill, currently in draft form, addresses key issues regarding certifying electronic health records (EHRs), the usability of patient portals and the fostering of a “network of networks.”
Get Real Health’s Senior Healthcare Strategist, Christina Caraballo, says “The notion of patient engagement is only as viable as the mandates that ensure data holders enable individuals to not only access data, but send data to applications that best suit their individual health needs while empowering them to actively engage with all of their health data.”
As we continue to transition into patient-centric care, it is important to guide organizations on how to protect health data while allowing it to be accessible and seamlessly sent to external applications at the will of individuals.
The highlights of the draft include specifics concerning the requirement that an EHR be designed to communicate with multiple health information exchanges within a trusted exchange framework. “When establishing these networks, it is important to take into account the need for consumer facing trust networks that have secure access to clinical data, and not simply focus on the exchange of data between providers,” adds Caraballo. The proposed legislation, strongly addresses the gaps in data exchange in the current landscape that has created data silos. Additionally, the proposed bill provides a specific timeline in which the government agencies responsible for carrying out these mandates must comply.
The section detailing patient access calls on the appropriate agencies to “…encourage health information exchange organizations and networks to partner with healthcare providers, health plans, and other appropriate entities to offer patients access to their electronic health information in a single, longitudinal format that is easy to understand, secure, and may update such information automatically.”
Deploying a patient portal is but one step in the process. That portal needs to be a comprehensive solution that delivers data securely, is broad in scope and meets all certification requirements. This is a great first step in providing a roadmap to make health information available across the country.”
Get Real Health’s products, InstantPHR and CHBase, were designed to support the very tenants of this bill. Both platforms, used alone or in tandem, allow patients to access data from multiple sources and then use that data to improve overall health.
To read the proposed bill in its entirety visit: http://1.usa.gov/1P75lih
