Health Information Policy: On Preparing For The Next War

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Abstract
PROLOGUE:One of the newest commodities in the health care marketplace is health information; close on its heels is the technology that is emerging to manage, move, and analyze that information. These tasks, in our complex, fragmented “nonsystem” of health care, are far from simple. As our nation moves headlong toward the twenty-first century, and as the development of technology products continues at breakneck speed, several issues arise that merit a pause in the action to ponder them. Chief among them is the role of managed care plans as managers of consumers' information as well as their care.The issues Donald Moran discusses in this paper have been the subject of much discussion on Capitol Hill and in the states, as lawmakers attempt to convert to legislation the patient protection and privacy provisions in President Clinton's Consumer Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. First among those provisions was disclosure of performance information by health plans and providers. In this paper Moran argues for a “conscious health information policy” to shape our nation's progress, rather than leaving the issues on a battlefield among stakeholders, from which the consumer might well emerge the loser.Moran founded the Moran Company in 1998, which, among other activities, helps its clients to form new business ventures in the health care field. He previously worked for the Lewin Group, a consulting firm in Fairfax, Virginia, and served for several years as executive associate director for budget and legislation in the Office of Management and Budget during the Reagan administration. As policymakers demand more and better information about health care, the private health information technology industry is investing heavily to produce the “paperless clinical enterprise” of the future: the infrastructure that will be required to satisfy those demands. Developments on a number of policy fronts, however—from medical privacy legislation to clinical software regulation to “telehealth”—suggest the need for a conscious health information policy that will inform the debate in each niche area with a larger sense of whether public policy will promote or retard private innovation in this area. Given the stakes involved, and the immediacy of the issues, leadership in this direction is badly needed.

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