Is your state working on Health IT legislation?

Posted by Lygeia Ricciardi October 19, 2007

A couple of months ago I wrote about the federal Wired for Healthcare Quality Act of 2007. According to many experts, that bill is still probably the most important to watch if you care about Health IT, but it has been moving slowly. Among other things, in recent months Congress has instead been focused on reauthorizing the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

Perhaps in response to a slow rate of movement on the national front, states have been picking up the pace in passing their own health IT legislation. At the eHealth Initiative (eHI) national conference last week, Vice President Christine Bechtel reported that roughly 15 health IT bills have become law. Last year, 121 pieces of health IT legislation were introduced in 38 states. This year, already more than 200 have been introduced. The more recent bills place a greater emphasis than previous ones on tightly integrating health IT with the goals of increasing the quality, safety, and efficiency of health care.

Common themes of state health IT legislation include provision of funding for startup costs for RHIOs or healthcare providers, efforts to safeguard privacy, and encouraging consumer engagement in health through IT. This last theme is, of course, the most likely to impact developers of PHRs. To find out what your state is doing, have a look at eHI’s state legislation tracking center.