"They are using new tools — such as predictive analytics and artificial intelligence — to better inform care decisions," Pollack said. "Additionally, hospitals and health systems are at the forefront of researching innovative treatment options and therapies targeted to individual patients based on their unique needs."
It is unclear, as the legislative calendar dwindles before Congress enters full campaign mode this summer, what policies the caucus will work on immediately. The group's statement promised the lawmakers "will advance a legislative agenda that encourages innovative policy ideas to improve the quality of care and lower costs for consumers."
"The main focus of the Health Care Innovation Caucus will be to explore and advance successful, innovative payment models as well as the technologies needed to support these models," the caucus co-chairs said.
The group's formation follows public touting by HHS Secretary Alex Azar of the administration's focus on value-based care and switches in gears on technologies such as electronic health records.
While healthcare stakeholders spent most of last year worried that the Trump administration was unwinding some of the advances in value-based payments, such as mandatory bundled payment models launched by the Obama administration, Azar has repeatedly promised "bold" measures when it comes to throwing the government's weight behind a comprehensive shift to paying for value.
In early January, before Azar's confirmation to his post, the Trump administration announced a new voluntary advanced alternative payment model.
On the technology front, the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner, a senior adviser at the White House, and CMS Administrator Seema Verma are working on an overhaul of electronic health record incentives to ease interoperability, as they announced last week at the Health Information and Management Systems Society's annual meeting in Las Vegas.
Kushner and Verma in a Thursday post for the tech blog Recode reiterated their support of giving patients more control over their health data.
"While tremendous progress has been made in ensuring health providers use Electronic Health Records (EHRs), patients too often are not able to access and share their records, and their doctor often lacks the complete picture of their health," Kushner and Verma said in their post.