January 8th, 2008
New Jersey to mandate electronic health records
New Jersey will become the first state to mandate a move toward electronic health records under a bill now before Gov. Jon Corzine.
A. 4044 establishes a 19-member commission to oversee the transition from paper.
The commission’s job will be to promote the use of national standards in “security, privacy, data content, format, vocabulary and information transfer standards.”
This would be nice, if such standards existed.
The commission would also oversee a state-wide health information technology plan under an “Office for e-HIT.” Given that the Department of Banking and Insurance is supposed to help, under the bill, it will be interesting to see who runs this office.
The plan has been under review for 6 months, and passed the Senate unanimously last Thursday. The final version passed the Assembly with just 3 dissents.
Under state law Gov. Corzine can sign it, veto it, or modify it in the form of a conditional veto.
The plan’s main sponsor is Rep. Herb Conaway of Delran(above), who is a doctor, a lawyer, an Air Force veteran, a Princeton graduate and (perhaps most important) a former deputy speaker of the Assembly.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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