House committee advances five bills pertaining to electronic health records management

Newswire: April 24, 2018.

Dateline: Washington

Five bills affecting electronic health records management in an effort to deal with the nation’s opioid crisis passed a House of Representatives subcommittee on April 24 and will now be heard by the full committee.

The measures advancing in the House are:

• The Standardizing Electronic Prior Authorization for Safe Prescribing Act of 2018 (H.R. 4841). It improves the process of prior authorization of medications within the Medicare program and is intended to ensure legitimate access to medications while preventing the misuse and abuse of them under prior authorization.
• ”Jessie’s Law” (H.R. 5009), which clarifies when a patient’s history of opioid abuse is to be included in certain health records.
• The Access to Telehealth Services for Opioid Use Disorders Act (H.R. 5603), which gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services the authority to waive certain Medicare telehealth requirements in cases involving the treatment of an opioid use disorder or a co-occurring mental health disorder.
• The Improving Access to Remote Behavioral Health Treatment Act of 2018, which amends the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 to to clarify the eligibility of community mental health centers to register for practicing telemedicine.
• And the Special Registration for Telemedicine Clarification Act of 2018 (H.R. 5483), which specifies the circumstances in which a special registration may be issued for someone to practice telemedicine.

In a statment, the executive director of Heath IT Now praised the bills’ movement, calling them “common sense reforms” that theCommittee on Energy and Commerce should pass at once. The committee is led by Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.).

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