HHS asks employers to push shared HIT standards

HHS head Mike Leavitt is asking employers to commit to a set of four goals which include asking health vendors to get their data interoperability act together. As part of this effort, Leavitt and his agency would like to see employers work closely with RHIOs, both by feeding them cost and quality information and using the information to make plan management decisions. In addition to encouraging interoperability, the goals ask employers to make vendors like health plans and third-party administrators increase the transparency of quality and pricing information and encourage the use of quality and efficiency incentives. HHS has begun to develop specific quality and cost specs for employers to use in implementing the goals. The idea, according to Leavitt, is to have more than 60 percent of the marketplace use these goals as part of their health purchasing criteria by spring of 2007. Meanwhile, the federal health plans have already adopted these goals, on orders from President Bush.

For more background on the employer initiative:
- read this article in HR.BLR.com
- review the HHS materials on "value-driven healthcare"

Related Article:
New York kicks off final phase of RHIO funding. Report

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