CHICAGO—Dr. Karen DeSalvo, HHS' top health information technology official, and acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt closed the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference by cataloging the achievements of the Obama administration but also delivering sober assessments of IT challenges that lie ahead.
They highlighted the drop in the uninsured rate, the continued low inflation rate in healthcare and increasing adoption of electronic health records.
Slavitt, though, also said the need for more innovation is urgent as the healthcare system moves away from fee-for-service payments and must accommodate a ballooning population of senior patients.
Both officials said the industry needs to achieve greater interoperability among technology products and services in order to support healthcare providers as they move toward value-based payment arrangements. They also pointed to a need for investment in infrastructure technology, such as software supporting state Medicaid agencies.
“We could do with less innovation with shareables and wearables,” Slavitt said, and more supporting basic infrastructure.
But interoperability was the main rhetorical focus of the speeches. DeSalvo took a sunnier tone, citing “increasingly widespread data exchange” and saying the “glass was half full.”
But she also acknowledged the distance yet to travel, noting that providers and developers need concrete steps to incentivize data-sharing.
Slavitt, however, said he has grave concerns about the state of interoperability. “You will see everything we do, and all our regulations, reflecting this,” he said. A lack of effective data-sharing, he said, is “not acceptable to us.”
“We would like to hear about every example—small, medium and large—of when someone is getting in the way of interoperability,” Slavitt said. “I'd like to have conversations to understand what exactly is going on. It's not technology. It's a matter of commitment.”
Slavitt also said the CMS must give clear signals about the direction of policy so the private sector knows how to act.
Hospital systems, he said, are making decisions about how to invest. “Should they spend hundreds of millions of dollars building a new wing, hiring new surgeons," he said, "or should they spend millions on primary-care specialists and population health analytics?”
