Federal commission to focus on easing the way to EMRs

The panel will address interoperability of digital health records before handing further efforts off to the private sector.

By David Glendinning, AMNews staff. June 27, 2005.

Washington -- In an effort to get private firms moving on developing standards for electronic medical records, the federal government has launched a commission to start tackling some of the toughest stumbling blocks.

The American Health Information Community is a public-private collaboration that will advise the Dept. of Health and Human Services on how the health community can migrate away from paper records. HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt, who will chair the commission, is seeking nominations from both sectors to fill up to 17 slots on the panel.

Leavitt said ensuring that individuals' EMRs can be accessed easily and efficiently by medical professionals in different areas of the health care system is one of the most important issues that the new group will take on.

"The national strategy for achieving interoperability of digital health information is for federal agencies ... to work with private-sector health care providers and employers in developing and adopting an architecture, standards and certification process," he said. Leavitt pointed out that the government pays for more than one-third of all health care in the country.

In addition to announcing the collaboration, HHS issued four requests for proposals aimed at securing contractors to develop solutions to some of the stickier implementation problems. HHS is seeking firms to design plans to bring differing EMR standards into line with each other, certify technology products that physicians and others can buy, construct prototypes for an Internet-based health information network, and find ways to ensure interoperability amid privacy and security concerns.