Private-sector healthcare leaders have identified six “common-sense solutions” to improve the U.S. healthcare system that they say would get support from both major political parties even in an election year. They are, as summarized by FierceHealthcare:
- “Set a ‘firm date’ — Dec. 31, 2018 — to achieve health-information interoperability everywhere in the U.S., with the private sector leading the way to help healthcare organizations share data.”
- “Implement reforms to improve the Food and Drug Administration, including easing administrative burdens imposed on the agency and taking steps to more quickly deliver innovative treatments and technologies to patients.”
- “Implement ‘best practices’for Medicare, insurers and healthcare providers to improve all aspects of care for chronically ill patients. Specifically, the report outlines a set of comprehensive care planning principles using diabetes patients as an example.”
- “Reform outdated physician self-referral and anti-kickback statutes, and expand Medicare payment waiver policies in order to encourage care coordination while preventing fraud and abuse.”
- “Standardize … privacy laws on the state and federal levels, and improve access to patient data for research. For example, the report notes that “one particularly burdensome barrier to nationwide health information exchange is the many diverse state laws across the country regulating health information alongside HIPAA.”
- “Improve the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Enhanced Medication Therapy Management (MTM) Model, including allowing participating plans to help develop the quality indicators that comprise the uniform set of MTM data elements, and employing a public comment process that allows a full range of stakeholders to provide input into the final measure set.”
