Government Relations, Healthcare, And HIMSS17
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
How the Trump administration could impact the healthcare industry.
As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump pledged one of his first acts as president would be to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. True to his word, once he was sworn in, he signed an executive order that began the process of dismantling Obamacare. While nothing concrete has been done to undo the system yet and no alternative program has been crafted to take its place, the change in administration could have some far-reaching repercussions for healthcare.
Therefore, it is not surprising government relations are a central theme for HIMSS 2017. This year’s event features several sessions with government speakers from the Defense health Agency (DHA), Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Among the sessions of note is a Military Medicine – Connected to the World, led by Vice Admiral Raquel Bono, director of DHA. This session highlights how the Department of Defense plans to use cutting-edge health and mobile technology and identifies the DHA’s highest priorities for industry engagement.
The diverse missions and challenges of the Military Health System (MHS) means interoperability is a particular challenge since the agency must consider civilian partners, federal partners, and international allies when moving towards greater interoperability. The session reveals some of the processes and methods for accomplishing those goals.
On Tuesday, Feb. 21, Dr. Jon White, Acting National Coordinator for Health Information Technology in ONC, and Dr. Kate Goodrich, Director of the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality (CCSQ) at CMS, will lead a session entitled Value Based Care Delivery: The March to MACRA and Beyond.
In addition to government-related sessions, 11 federal agencies are participating in this year’s Federal Health IT Solutions Pavilion in Exhibition Hall A, Booth 230. These include the Defense Health Agency (DHA), Department of Commerce, National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Federal Health Architecture (FHA), National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health’s Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). For a full schedule of all the presentations occurring in the Pavilion, please click here.