Standardizing medical data.

Abstract

Congress passed The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 in the doldrums of last Summer, and promptly charged the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics to begin working on the regulations that will help providers, payers, and all members of the public adhere to the spirit of the law. What does this legislation portend for the health care industry? Standardization of information systems will play a large role in assuring the portability of health care insurance from one employer and payer to another in this legislation. Accountability, too, will depend on those same data standards to allow comparisons of processes and outcomes of care across health plans, providers, communities, states, and regions. In fact, without standardized data describing patients and their treatments, there can be no comparisons of their outcomes of care, or the processes used to treat them.