By: Renee Broadbent, CCSFP, CHC
Chief Information Officer & Information Security Officer
Health data interoperability is critical for patient-centered care. It has taken many years and many technical advances in the healthcare space to achieve this goal. The benefits derived from a physician having a 360 view of a patient, cannot be understated. Changes in recent weeks by the new administration can potentially impact the progress that has been made in this area. Of note, the following benefits have been achieved with better interoperability:
- Improved Care Coordination: Interoperability networks like Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) enable providers to access up-to-date information from various members of a patient’s care team, which is crucial for treatment planning and ensuring care coordination, especially during care transitions.
- Better Patient Safety: Access to a patient’s longitudinal medical history helps mitigate adverse drug interactions and clinical errors. For example, HIE participation can identify high-risk medication use that clinicians might not detect without clinical data exchange.
- Enhanced Patient Experience: Interoperability reduces the need for patients to repeatedly provide their medical history, saving time and reducing the risk of errors. It also prevents duplicate testing, saving patients from unnecessary procedures.
- Faster Emergency Care: Real-time data exchange is crucial in emergency care, allowing providers to make timely and accurate clinical decisions. For instance, access to outside health data is associated with a reduced risk of code blue events in the emergency department.
- Empowered Patients: Patient portal applications that integrate real-time data from Electronic Health Records (EHRs) give individuals access to vital health information, fostering patient engagement and medication adherence.
- Ease for Physicians: Having ready access to all patient information saves the physician and practice time from collecting data from paper and other disparate sources.
The Health Information Technology and Advisory Committee (HITAC) is an advisory body established by the 21st Century Cures Act in 2016, that recommends policies, standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria. It focuses on advancing health equity, supporting public health, interoperability, privacy and security, and patient access to information. The committee is composed of at least 25 members, including advocates for patients or consumers of health IT, and members appointed by various government officials. On February 3, 2025, the Trump Administration indefinitely canceled all meetings of (HITAC).
A memo sent to HITAC members announced the cancellation of all meetings until further notice. This has created uncertainty about how the administration will regulate healthcare technology and advancing and potentially beneficial technologies, like Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The indefinite suspension of HITAC meetings puts the HHS in violation of the 21st Century Cures Act. In addition, prevents progress forward and potentially a backwards track on all that has been accomplished. It is necessary to have some level of governance over advancing technologies in healthcare to ensure that the privacy and security of individuals data remains safe, while continuing to enable new technologies to create overall improvements in healthcare. Limited guardrails can result in chaos and further deterioration and trust in the US healthcare system.
