Transcript

Dr. Klodner:  The standardization is fundamental in being able to move the information back and forth, and we don’t have those standards now. In fact, it’s worse than whether it’s a DVD plus or minus or RW. It’s, you’ve got a DVD here, and you’ve got a floppy disk here, and you’ve got, you know, an L.P. record.

Mr. Sesno:  Well, you’re the IT Czar. What are you doing about it?

Dr. Klodner:  Well, that--what we’re actually doing now is working with the communities to establish standards that meet the needs of both consumers and providers and the rest of the health care sector, so that we, in fact, do have this inter--achieve this interoperability and then using that as the basis for certification of various electronic health records and ultimately, the various networks. So these standards are fundamental in order to achieve that interoperability.

Mr. Sesno:  Let me ask the three of you. You’ve got the Czar sitting here. What do you want from government? What does the government--the federal government--need to be providing to protect people’s medical records and information, but also move this forward so that it can be very effective?

Mr. Brown:  Deven, you go first.

Ms. McGraw:  Okay. I like what someone said in an earlier panel--"a road map for moving forward." And not just a set of sort of steps that we’ll take to get there, but also some overarching principles and standards to guide us for getting there--a clear statement about the need to keep these records private and to have security standards in place, to have transparent policies that people are aware of--that’s what I think the government’s key role is.

Mr. Sesno:  People are aware of and can understand.

Ms. McGraw:  Absolutely.

Mr. Brown:  You know, I definitely agree with that, and I think that, you know, just sort of going back to the earlier point--health records are very much like what we experienced when you started seeing credit agencies come up.

Mr. Sesno:  Mm-hmm.

Mr. Brown:  There was--you know, various providers had various platforms and that type of thing. but at some point, there was a standard developed to report, on some frequency, access to your information. There was method put in place to identify your debt ratios and those type of things. and that industry got together, and they defined a set of rules, standards, reporting criteria, et cetera.