Healthcare stakeholders shared the following suggestions:
1. Patient-matching. In its letter, the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives said developing and implementing a strategy to allow providers to accurately match patients across care settings would help facilitate data exchange. To this end, CHIME asked the Senators “to remove the prohibition barring the development of and requiring adherence to standards for a unique patient identifier as a means to dramatically enhance the sharing of healthcare data. At a minimum, Congress should support administration efforts to help identify possible solutions that can address this staggering patient safety issue.”
2. Standardized data elements. The creation and widespread adoption of data standards would help to ease data exchange and reduce associated costs, wrote representatives from the Electronic Health Record Association.
3. Ensure privacy and security standards are met. HIPAA alone is not enough to ensure the privacy and security of shared data, wrote the eHealth Initiative. However, more must be done to “achieve alignment among policies, business rules and technological developments to support the exchange of health data across multiple entities and by HIE organizations,” the group wrote. “One consideration is an opportunity to leverage the testing and certification programs through ONC to validate and ensure adherence to meeting these requirements.”
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