HLC Newsletter

Healthcare Leaders Issue Roadmap for Health Information Technology over the Next Decade

Workplace for Electronic Data Exchange (WEDI) Foundation Report Offers Recommendations to Improve Health Information Exchange

WASHINGTON – A nine-month effort by the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) Foundation to determine ways in which health information technology can lead to improved healthcare delivery and greater system efficiency culminated today in the release of report offering recommendations that, according to WEDI Honorary Chair and former HHS Secretary Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, can serve as a roadmap for health IT over the next decade.

The full report is available at www.wedi.org/topics/2013-wedi-report

Healthcare Leadership Council President Mary R. Grealy serves on the WEDI Report Executive Steering Committee and spoke at today’s press briefing announcing the report’s publication.

She said the report “serves as an advisory bridge, helping to lead us from the healthcare system of today to what we are capable of achieving in the very foreseeable future.”

Drawing from the report, Ms. Grealy emphasized the need for a regulatory environment that allows health information exchanges to flourish and lead to health system modernization.  She said, “We need, for example, privacy policies that protect the sanctity of the individual’s personal health records but, at the same time, allow the flow of information that is vital to quality treatment and health system improvement.”