Andy Slavitt’s Testimony to Congressional Hearing on Health IT Barriers to Medical Practices

Yesterday morning, Andy testified to congressional members of the Small Business Committee’s Subcommittee on Healthcare and Information Technology. The hearing focused on health IT barriers to small medical practices. Andy’s testimony offered insights based on OptumInsight’s perspective working with physicians through health IT implementations, and practical recommendations the federal government could follow that would help small physician practices implement and use health IT, including:

• Developing standards that enhance EHRs and HIEs ability to support physicians in their daily work and simplify administration and compliance with multiple federal programs
• Extending federal support for HIEs, and encourage sustainable business models based on analytics that support better patient care and community health improvement
• Reducing uncertainty over the legal environment to protect physicians use of health IT and providing uniformity of privacy laws
• Extending small business loan guarantees to small physician practices to ease access to capital for health IT investments. Such guarantees would not cost taxpayers any resources
• Continuing to support Health IT Regional Extension Centers that are providing essential assistance to providers in selecting and implementing tools that will best meet their needs

Watch the video here.