1) A modern value-based, technology-enabled health care system creates better health care outcomes for everyone. eHI supports a value-based health care system that enables providers to deliver individualized care when and where patients need it, improve outcomes, and lower costs.

Virtual Care & Remote Patient Monitoring

• Permanently remove Medicare telehealth reimbursement restriction
• Promote cross-state provider license portability
• ​Remove barriers to the on-going utilization of remote patient monitoring devices
   

2) Digital health tools can be powerful tools to identify and address health disparities and promote health literacy. A variety of social and systemic factors have the potential to impact overall and individual health status. Health care providers and organizations should have access and effectively use digital health tools to identify and work to mitigate factors that lead to health disparities. Public policy must focus on addressing systemic causes of health inequity and allow health care providers to fully leverage digital health tools to combat individual health disparities faced by their patients. Policies should also seek to ensure these tools do not exacerbate existing biases. Additionally, policy should promote equity in access to digital health tools for both providers and patients and focus on ensuring that the design and implementation of digital health enables all levels of digital and health information literacy to benefit.

Broadband

• Support & expand FCC COVID-19 Telehealth Program
• Support high-speed broadband infrastructure funding

Digital health literacy

• Establish funding for digital health literacy programs through FQHCs/RHCs/CHCs

Data collection & exchange

• Support the development and adoption of health IT standards around the collection and exchange of social determinants of health data
   

3) Patient health information should be easily and securely accessed, exchanged, and shared electronically. eHI supports eliminating the practice of information blocking and allowing for the free and secure access, exchange, and use of health information. In order to advance modern approaches to interoperability, eHI supports the responsible and secure use of standards-based application programming interfaces (APIs) by all applicable stakeholders to enable effective, authorized access to health data by patients, their authorized representatives, providers, payers, researchers, and others authorized to access such data.

Interoperability

• Support implementation and enforcement of information blocking and interoperability rules, as well as continued education for those subject to regulations
• Support secure, standards-based approaches to interoperability and information sharing
   

​4) Patients should be confident that their data is secure and protected – regardless of who controls the data. eHI believes Congress must pass comprehensive data privacy legislation that reflects how data flows in today’s health care ecosystem.

Federal privacy legislation

• Support comprehensive federal data privacy legislation that meaningfully addresses gaps in legal protections for health data outside HIPAA’s coverage
• Advocate that bills related to collection and use of Covid-tracking data emphasize patient education and privacy

Implementation of existing regulations

• Ensure CMS/ONC interoperability rules are implemented in a way that takes burden off of both providers and patients
• Ensure the HIPAA proposed rule is finalized in such a way that increased information sharing doesn’t also result in increased risk of privacy violations 
   

5) Public health systems should be modernized and adequately funded. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to modernize current public health surveillance and reporting systems. eHI supports efforts to promote the electronic sharing of public health information and provide predictable and adequate funding to ensure this goal can be accomplished.

Public health modernization

• Monies appropriated for public health system modernization should be used to support ensuring public health systems are interoperable with clinical data sets, allow for the electronic exchange of health information, and improve public health surveillance systems

Public health funding

• Restore and protect funding for the Public Health & Prevention Fund