2009-09-29 10:41 | fche blog politics nursey state
Whoa, I had no idea our friends to the south were already on their way toward the nationalization of their health care information.
Title XIII of the stimulus law provided for “the development of a nationwide health information technology infrastructure” that would include “the qualified electronic health record” of “each person in the United States by 2014.”
The law specifically says that this “means an electronic record of health-related information on an individual that — (A) includes patient demographic and clinical health information, such as medical history and problems lists; and (B) has the capacity — (i) to provide clinical decision support; (ii) to support physician order entry; (iii) to capture and query information relevant to health care quality; and (iv) to exchange electronic health information with, and integrate such information from other sources.”
These records—including a person’s “medical history and problems list”—must be put into a national system that allows for “the electronic linkage of health care providers, health plans, the government and other interested parties to enable electronic exchange and use of health information among all the components in the health care infrastructure in accordance with applicable law,” says the law.
If this is correct, the stimulus law mandates the centralized collection of health data for basically everyone. No wonder the US lefties were so keen on it. That this is even conceivable in a free country is gobsmacking.
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The law is available online. It doesn’t mandate anything like that. It creates an Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. The National Coordinator is supposed to review and endorse standards of Health Information Techology with respect to a set of objectives. One of those objectives is indeed "The utilization of an electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014." There are a number of other objectives. All that law says is that the National Coordinator should endorse technology which can meet that objective. It doesn’t say that the government will adopt that technology, just that the technology should be capable of doing that. Actually adopting anything is left for later. Even in that objective there is no statement that the system should be used for everybody, only that it should be capable of being used for everybody. It’s perfectly reasonable for people concerned about big government to keep an eye on this, but it’s not reasonable to read the stimuls law as mandating centralized collection of health data. It doesn’t do that at all. Ian Lance Taylor (Email) (URL) - 2009-09-30 01:12
“Actually adopting anything is left for later.”
Well, let’s say that’s true. (Grokking the 1588 pages to find out one way or another is beyond me for now.)
Why would the feds possibly mandate this sort of stuff, unless the intent is exactly to adopt it on some
quiet Friday afternoon? Doesn’t it seem like an obvious after-the-fact argument for them to say …
“well, it’s already paid for (by my grandchildren), so we might as well use it that way for the Public Good”.
And once the cat is out of the bag, with data exchanged, it’ll be as tricky to undo as those other fine
entitlement programs that were specifically designed not to be cancelable. Frank - 2009-09-30 20:06