Kansas Health Institute | Information For Policy Makers. Health for Kansans.

The group working to develop a statewide health information exchange will soon be asking the Legislature for a solution to what attorneys called “a patchwork” of inconsistent patient privacy protection laws that they said would hinder the digital sharing of health information among medical providers.

But members of the e-Health Advisory Council agreed to wait until next year to seek legislative approval of a non-profit, public-private corporation to oversee and manage a Kansas health information exchange.

Roderick Bremby, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, told members that the governance structure for the exchange, which officials have said they hope to have in operation by October, was still too undefined to take to the Legislature and that the governor was unwilling to have a half-baked plan presented to lawmakers.

“The governor is not interested in putting anything incomplete in front of this Legislature,” Bremby told the group Thursday. “He wants something very thorough and so do I.”

A working work of the advisory council is still crafting a draft plan for how the exchange would be governed. Helen Connors of the University of Kansas Center for Healthcare Informatics is chairing the council and the governance working group.

She told members she intended to present a draft for their review at the group’s next meeting, which is scheduled for next month.

Jerry Slaughter of the Kansas Medical Society and some others at the meeting told Bremby they were concerned that waiting until next year to get a governing corporation approved by the Legislature was too long to wait given the timelines involved in having an operational exchange. He said there could be an exchange before it was clear who would be running it.

He also said he was concerned that the 2010 elections likely would mean changes of key personnel at state agencies and in public offices and the loss of “institutional memory and continuity” on health information exchange issues.

The development of an exchange, which has been discussed off and on for a few years in Kansas, was fast tracked after the federal economic stimulus package was approved last February. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included billions of dollars to promote the use of electronic health records and their exchange. The goal set by federal officials is for every American to have an electronic health record by 2014.

Doctors, hospitals and other providers who have workable electronic systems by 2014 would be eligible for federal incentive payments. Those who don’t have them by 2015 will face penalties.

“The concern in the physician community that I represent is: Are we going to be ready?” Slaughter said.

Bremby told the group that a governing entity also could be created with a governor’s executive order and that he didn’t think the Legislature this year would approve an exchange corporation even if one were included in the group’s bill proposals.

But Bremby and members agreed that legislation drafted by the council's working group on legal issues should move forward.

Jeff Ellis and Martie Ross of the Lathrop and Gage law firm told council members that Kansas has dozens of sometimes conflicting laws regarding patient privacy and that medical providers wouldn't use an information exchange if they didn't feel confident they could without violating some state statute.

One goal of the exchange is to allow a patient's various medical care providers no matter where they are access to the patients records. For example, a specialist in Kansas City might need access to information kept by a patient's family doctor in Colby.

The e-Health Advisory Council is scheduled to next meet from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Feb. 9 at the SRS Learning Center in Topeka.