Committee updates 21st Century Cures discussion draft

The House Energy and Commerce Committee today released an update to its draft legislation to accelerate and improve the discovery, development and delivery of new cures and treatments for patients. Among other changes, the updated draft replaces placeholders for sections on ensuring interoperability of electronic health records and health information technology and expanding Medicare telehealth services with legislative language. The AHA is carefully reviewing the new interoperability language, which would, among other things, add new mechanisms to determine whether EHRs are interoperable and introduce significant enforcement mechanisms aimed at vendors, providers and health information system providers that engage in “information blocking.” The Health Subcommittee is scheduled to mark up the draft legislation tomorrow. For AHA’s initial comments on the discussion draft, visit www.aha.org/letters.