The enactment of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) offers an unprecedented opportunity to strategically align efforts to improve health and health care. Both the Meaningful Use program under HITECH and Medicare Shared Savings Program under ACA can help set essential priorities to improve health care coordination, quality, and patient engagement.
Markle Connecting for Health, a public-private collaborative of more than 100 organizations across the spectrum of health care and information technology (IT), appreciates the opportunity to comment on patient-centeredness and experience assessment criteria, as well as quality measures for accountable care organizations (ACOs) within the Medicare Shared Savings Program.
Our primary recommendation is to urge the strategic alignment of HITECH and ACO opportunities to create a more optimal environment for doctors and patients to share and use the best available information for high quality and cost-effective health decisions. Based on our many previous collaborative public comments on HITECH and Meaningful Use of health IT, we believe there is significant opportunity to create such alignment now.
