In a New York Times op-ed piece, David Brailer, MD, PhD, former national coordinator for health IT, urges Congress to pass the Senate version of the pending health IT bill, which requires that the electronic health records that hospitals and others donate to physicians be portable. Advocates of the House’s version of the bill argue that a portability requirement will deter EHR adoption and that standards would be premature at this point. But such opposition to portability, maintains Brailer, fosters “proprietary health information,” which restricts good care rather than improves it. “As the era of digital medicine begins, we have one chance to get it right, and that means making portable health information our priority,” Brailer writes. Read the op-ed piece.
