Contact: Kelly Broadway, 202-808-8853
kbroadway@health-innovation.org
Washington, D.C. – The Health Innovation Alliance (HIA) provided guidance to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in response to the Health Technology Ecosystem request for information regarding the market of digital health products for beneficiaries of Medicare, along with the current state of the health technology ecosystem.
“For too long, federal bureaucrats dithered with burdensome requirements, processes, and minutiae while losing sight of the big issues – cost, access, outcomes – that Americans care most about. Healthcare for many Americans deteriorated as a result. We are glad to see the new leadership at HHS focus on transformational changes our healthcare system desperately needs. The good news is that we have the technology and data to improve care dramatically; AI isn’t the future, it’s a tool we can use now to cut through red tape, fight burnout, and fill critical workforce gaps,” said Joel White, President of the Health Innovation Alliance. “If CMS is serious about delivering on the bold vision laid out by President Trump and Dr. Oz, it must harness technology and data to put patients first and empower providers, not bureaucrats.”
In its comments, HIA calls on CMS to:
- Empower Consumers: Incentivize an interoperable data environment where patients can easily share or access basic personal health information
- Expand Innovation: Incentivize private sector solutions that integrate information from a patient’s medical record, insurance coverage, and other areas, giving patients and providers clear, accessible, and actionable information at the point of care
- Promote Interoperability: Rather than choosing one “winner,” promote all Application Programming Interfaces (API) to better share data across different systems
- End Bad Actor Practices: Aggressively enforce information blocking requirements and expand them to labs and other healthcare providers
- Promote Transparency: Encourage and incentivize solutions that synthesize patient clinical and insurance coverage data at the point of care
- Improve Accuracy and Reduce Medical Errors and Waste: Encourage the development and adoption of a national patient identifier to give providers the tools to provide the best care