House subcommittee approves 21st Century Cures legislation

The House Energy & Commerce Health Subcommittee today approved the 21st Century Cures Act, sending the legislation without offsets to pay for it to the full committee for consideration next week. Sponsors said they would continue to make improvements to the bill. Among other provisions aimed at accelerating new cures and treatments, the legislation would add new mechanisms to determine whether electronic health records are interoperable and introduce significant enforcement mechanisms aimed at vendors, providers and health information system providers that engage in “information blocking.” The AHA is reviewing the interoperability language, which was added to the legislation yesterday along with language aimed at addressing certain barriers to greater use of telehealth services in Medicare. To view AHA’s comments on the draft legislation, visit www.aha.org/letters.