Taking the Lead: How CIOs Can Help Shape Health IT Policy

Lead or be led.

When offered that option, most healthcare executives would choose the first, especially if the entity doing the leading is the government. As arguably the most regulated industry in the United States, healthcare may seem mired in complicated laws and burdensome rules that don’t align with everyday practice.

Health IT hasn’t been spared. It is now integrated into every aspect of patient care, which puts us at a regulatory tipping point: we can get engaged in the policy-making process and have the opportunity to lead the discussion, or wait for regulators to set the rules and live with the consequences.

The CHIME Advocacy Summit was launched last year to provide members with the knowledge, tools and connections to make a difference in D.C. Because everyone should have a say about policies that affect them, we decided that the Advocacy Summit should be open to anyone who wanted to be informed and involved. This year we are holding the summit again on June 26-28 in Washington, D.C., and keeping the event open to anyone who registers.

So, who should attend? Any healthcare IT leader who is concerned about patient privacy, or telehealth, or the nitty gritty details of interoperability and its implementation. Or any CIO or CMIO whose healthcare organization is wrestling with the opioid epidemic. Or anyone responsible for cybersecurity in his or her organization. And certainly, any provider or industry government affairs representative who wants to get the latest on the massive rules proposed by CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC).

Below is a list of our keynote speakers:

• Adam Boehler, deputy administrator for innovation and quality for CMS and director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation
• U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson from Ohio, a former CIO and telehealth supporter
• Admiral Brett P. Giroir, MD, assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, who will discuss opioid initiatives
• Will Smart, CIO of NHS England, who will talk about lessons learned from the WannaCry cyberattack and the EU’s General Data Protect Regulation
• Kimberly Brandt, principal deputy administrator for operations of CMS

Of course, many of these topics are interconnected. For instance, telehealth offers a promising platform for addressing the opioid crisis in rural areas. Interoperability, data sharing, and the current emphasis patient access to their data will require robust cybersecurity to protect it. We have more than a dozen speakers who will explore these issues, including U.S. Rep. Doris Matsui of California, who will discuss what’s on the horizon for telehealth, and ONC’s Don Rucker, MD, who will talk about interoperability and the future of health IT.

U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte will kick off the Advocacy Summit and we will offer members Hill visits at the conclusion. In between, we have sessions featuring policymakers from ONC, CMS, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Office for Civil Rights, as well as representatives from HL7 and the Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients (CRISP).

The topics speakers will address will likely change how healthcare IT is applied in hospitals and health systems for the next decade, if not longer. Everyone in this space has something at stake, along with the rare opportunity to shape upcoming regulations before they are set in stone. Please join us to learn – and lead.

More information about the 2019 CHIME Advocacy Summit is available here.

This piece was written by CHIME policy leaders Leslie Krigstein (VP of Congressional Affairs) and Mari Savickis (VP of Federal Affairs).