The Power of Technology to Transform Patient Care

The private sector has long played a leadership role in developing innovative and patient-focused solutions that enable individuals to access convenient, high-quality care, including through the use of technology and data. The COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) brought with it unprecedented challenges, requiring rapid innovation and collective responses to prevent infection, to ensure continued access to care, and to chart a pathway forward.

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Recommendations

Improving Health Care & Public Health Data and Technology Infrastructure

  • Maintain Regulatory Flexibility for Virtual Care – The health care system took steps over the course of the last year to invest in and advance access to virtual care tools, such as telehealth. Federal and state-based policymakers aided in these efforts by providing regulatory flexibility for coverage, payment, and enforcement discretion. Policymakers should continue to provide ongoing flexibility through the remainder of the public health emergency and assess whether certain policies should be made permanent.
  • Public Health Funding – Congress appropriated funding through several of the COVID-19 relief packages to CDC for public health data and infrastructure modernization. This funding is being used to modernize CDC’s data systems and for state and local jurisdictions to upgrade their systems and to expand capacity. Congress should evaluate whether additional funding is needed in the short term and should provide an ongoing and dedicated source of funding for public health infrastructure maintenance.
  • Connecting Public Health and Health Care Infrastructure – The Administration should structure future funding opportunities to ensure a cross-sector approach to strengthening public health and health care systems rather than a continued siloed approach to data sharing. 
  • Increase Electronic Case Reporting – Public health organizations have urged increased funding to improve and expand electronic case reporting (eCR), which automatically generates an electronic submission of reportable diseases and conditions from an EHR to public health agencies.
  • Incentivize Public Health Data Standardization Efforts – Encourage the implementation and use of standardized public health data classes and elements to facilitate more streamlined exchange of public health data.

Advancing Health Equity through Health IT

  • Increase Collection of Race/Ethnicity Data Across Public Programs – Public programs should be required to collect race and ethnicity data, and publicly report health data stratified by race/ethnicity, at a minimum, for all individual-level data collection and reporting. The federal government should also provide guidance to state and local officials and ensure that all data collected is done so in a standardized way. 
  • Encourage Cross Sector Data Sharing Collaborations – Public policymaking should encourage the development and enhancement of current cross-sector data sharing efforts. HHS should also take steps to further the standardization and interoperability of social needs data.

Maintaining Patient Access and Trust

Enhance Privacy Protections – HHS should require third party applications (including personal health applications) to provide individuals with a clear, concise notification about their privacy practices. HHS should also provide robust outreach and education to individuals and should take steps to strengthen privacy and non-discrimination protections for health and health-related data.

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