As enthusiasm builds for a statewide database of electronic patient health records, state lawmakers are being asked to scrap a three-year-old state-backed effort to achieve the goal and start fresh with a new $5 million program.
In 2006, the Department of Public Health pitched in a $300,000 grant to create eHealthConnecticut to plug the state’s health care industry into a central health information portal.
Since then, the organization’s 25-person board, which includes consumers, medical providers, hospital officials, health plan officials and employers, has helped secure an additional $300,000 from private investors as it works on a plan to implement the information exchange.
But eHealthConnecticut hasn’t moved fast enough for state Sen. Dan Debicella (R-Shelton), who has introduced a bill that seeks $5 million for a completely new approach.
“The technology has progressed to such a point where we’ve leapfrogged what people thought five years ago,” said Debicella, a ranking member on the Public Health and Appropriation committees. “We’ve hit the stage where people are beyond understanding the concept and we need to get into the nitty-gritty.”
Debicella, who said the bill has bipartisan support, is confident it can pass, despite the current budget crisis, because of the potential savings it could mean for health care.
Medicaid Initiative
Still, members of the eHealthConnecticut board, which will soon include Sen. President Donald E. Williams ( D-Brooklyn), question why the state would want to distance itself from the organization after three years of work.
“I think the eHealth committee has done some important work, and they’re going to be even more important in the future,” Williams said. “I think what’s important is that we don’t lose any momentum.”
Scott Cleary, eHealthConnecticut’s program director, cites steady progress.
“We’ve been spending a lot of time over last few years getting our governance and technical model squared away so it would palatable and sellable to all folks interacting with the information exchange,” Clearly said. “There’s been a lot of groundwork, and we know that we’re just about ready to demonstrate the thing.”
The timing of the bill is puzzling, Cleary said, because eHealthConnecticut and the Department of Social Services are preparing to begin work on a program to sign on Medicaid patients into a health information exchange.
The project, backed by a $5 million federal grant awarded in 2007, is supposed to help Connecticut get in line with a Medicaid initiative to have all doctors prescribing electronically by 2012.
“We’ve done a lot of legwork, but maybe we don’t get the credit for it,” said eHealthConnecticut board member Ellen Andrews, executive director of the CT Health Policy Project, a health care consumer advocacy group. Andrews said she will contact Debicella to see how eHealthConnecitcut could factor into the creation of a statewide database.
Consultant’s Report
The Legislature is awaiting a report from an outside consultant hired in the fall that will make recommendations for the best way to implement a health information exchange in Connecticut. Cleary said he was hopeful the report would validate the efforts of eHealthConnecticut.
“If the report doesn’t name us directly, maybe it will describe the perfect health information exchange, and it will match what we are,” Cleary said.
Congress’s finalized stimlus package provides for $20 billion to fund incentive payments for the use of health information technology systems, as well as another $3 billion to build IT infrastructure. The details of how the money would be spread throughout the states, however, remain sketchy, but Debicella said the stimulus package could fully fund his bill without having to dip into state money.
“Connecticut should get some of that money, and we hope that will be the means to actually implement the bill,” Debicella said. “It’s our way out given the current fiscal crisis Connecticut is in. We can afford it now.”
