The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) Foundation, a Reston, Va.-based nonprofit focused on healthcare information exchange (HIE), has released a four-pronged health IT roadmap.
The roadmap features four areas of focus: patient engagement, payment models, data harmonization and exchange, and innovative encounter models. The report was the culmination of a nine month public-private effort with more than 200 subject matter expert volunteers and comes 20 years after the 1993 WEDI Report.
“Like the WEDI Report that I initiated in 1993 that became the roadmap for electronic business solutions for healthcare in the 1990s, the 2013 WEDI Report and recommendations will serve as the roadmap that will lead to greater efficiency and improved healthcare delivery in the years ahead”, WEDI Founder and former Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Louis W. Sullivan, M.D., said in a statement.
WEDI outlines mulitple recommendations around its four areas of focus. For patient engagement, WEDI recommended stakeholders: standardize the patient identification process across the healthcare system, expand health IT education and literacy programs for consumers to encourage greater use of the technologies, and identify and promote effective and actionable electronic approaches to patient information capture, maintenance, and secure and appropriate access that leverage mobile devices and "smart" technologies and applications.
Elsewhere, WEDI recommended stakeholders develop a framework for assessing critical, core attributes of alternative payment models. Also, for data harmonization, it asked for the identification and promotion of consistent and efficient methods for electronic reporting of quality and health status measures across all stakeholders, including public health, with initial focus on recipients of quality measure information. The full report can be read here.
“The 2013 Report will help to set a common direction for the healthcare industry as we continue to evolve to greater focus on patients managing their own healthcare information, the movement towards fee-for-value arrangements, and the rise of new payment models and technologies,” Devin Jopp, Ed.D., President & CEO of WEDI, said in a statement.
