Senators Focus on Improving Healthcare Through Big Data

Senate Finance Committee leaders want to empower healthcare consumers through the widespread availability of health data.

• Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Ranking Member Charles Grassley (R-IA) have queried stakeholders in healthcare about what would improve health data sharing and usage.  This is a major issue for the Healthcare Leadership Council, which has released its own multi-sector principles on health data access.
• Their questions are premised on the idea that making more health data available to the public will enable consumers of healthcare to control their health costs.
• Chairman Wyden elaborated on his thinking at a forum sponsored by the Business Roundtable and AARP.  His remarks there partly overlapped with his recent comments to the Healthcare Leadership Council.

Health data are “a growing but largely untapped resource for accelerating improvements in healthcare quality and value,” Sens. Wyden and Grassley wrote.

• These senators see “great potential for use by consumers who can be empowered to choose providers that best fit their specific needs.”
• Providers could use this information to “improve and deliver higher-quality care.”
• Access to big data would let payers “design the most efficient and effective delivery models.”

The Senate Finance leaders have asked for input and suggestions from “providers, patients and consumers, employers, entrepreneurs, developers, payers, states, researchers, and public health experts.”  It’s certainly worthwhile to cast a wide net in order to answer their questions appropriately. 

• The lawmakers would like to know which data sources, in what form and for what purposes, should be opened up, while safeguarding privacy.
• The senators asked what barriers keep stakeholders from using data sources.  They want insights about reforms needed to remove those barriers, as well as reforms for cutting down on data fragmentation and increasing data access and usability. 

Disclosing massive amounts of health data “can knock down those healthcare silos.”  Wyden would like to see healthcare providers collaborating “across these various settings and states.” 

• “It can empower consumers and patients — in effect putting them in control of their own care — and it can help physicians identify patterns in real time to get them better care,” Wyden told the BRT/AARP audience.
• “But right now, the status quo sort of ties our hands,” Widen said.  “It limits providers, patients, consumers to a world that in effect is tethered to dial-up, rather than high-speed internet.  So, rule number one with respect to the future: Let’s throw out the floppy disc.  Let’s get in line with the times.” 

Health leaders applaud the vision articulated by the Senate Finance Committee leadership.  We agree that appropriate data-sharing can advance care coordination, collection of quality measures, patient safety and cost containment.  Most especially, making Medicare and Medicaid data regularly available to commercial healthcare firms and lifting restrictions on combining data sets would facilitate usage of the data for making faster improvements in health operations.  Health leaders look forward to working with Sens. Wyden and Grassley toward that end.