Minister de Jonge (VWS) sends the Lower House a letter about Regie op elektronische gegevensuitwisseling in de zorg. He explains how the Wegiz works and how this law will accelerate electronic exchange in healthcare in the coming years. He also takes the House through the preconditions for achieving care-wide electronic exchange.
Date October 15,
Subject Directing electronic data exchange in healthcare
Dear Chairman,
It is important for health care providers and for the people to whom they provide care to have the right information in a timely manner so that the right care can be delivered in the right place at the right time. Currently, this is not always the case. Healthcare providers still exchange a lot on paper or via fax. In addition, information still often has to be retyped, which sometimes causes errors and adds significantly to the administrative burden in healthcare. People also have to tell their stories more often because caregivers do not have all the information. To make the exchange of data in healthcare better, faster and easier, it is necessary to digitize data flows; this is a major task.
Several letters have been sent to your Chamber on this subject by my predecessors and debates have been held with your Chamber. The urgency is great and partly for this reason the health care field has asked me and your Chamber to take even more direction. This includes the motion of the members De Vries (VVD), Dijkstra (D66) and Van den Berg (CDA) which requests "to take the lead and also to investigate whether it is possible to create a legal basis for making the electronic exchange of data between health care providers compulsory". Such an obligation is a next step in the stepwise increased role of the government in accelerating electronic data exchange in healthcare in recent years. I endorse the need for this and am working closely with the parties in the healthcare field to achieve acceleration, because both the government and the field cannot do this alone.
The bill on electronic data exchange in healthcare was presented to your Chamber on May 3 of this year (Parliamentary Papers II 2020/21, 35824, nos. 1 through 4). My predecessors on this dossier informed your Chamber prior to this with progress letters (Parliamentary Papers II 2020/21, 27529, nos. 219, 230, 263, Parliamentary Papers II 2018/19, 27529, no. 189).
Simultaneously with this letter I offer your Chamber both the memorandum following the report and a memorandum of amendment, clarifying in the bill that this bill does not oblige the exchange of data and thus the possible breaking of medical secrecy. This partly in view of the questions from your Chamber on this subject.
In the first part of this letter, I explain how the Wegiz works and how this law will accelerate electronic exchange in healthcare in the coming years. I outline what agreements I intend to make with the healthcare industry to achieve implementation and what the schedule looks like. The Wegiz is a framework law; therefore, further details and implementation will take place step by step.
In the second part of the letter, I take your Chamber through the preconditions for achieving care-wide electronic exchange. The Wegiz mandates electronic exchange for specific situations, such as when an image must be exchanged between hospitals. This is necessary, but not sufficient to allow care-wide information to flow. Therefore, I am also putting maximum effort into creating the right preconditions. In this letter I discuss, among other things, the development and management of information standards, the digital identification and addressing of healthcare providers, the ability to determine that - if necessary - permission has been given for exchange, and the reassessment of the bases for data exchange appropriate to the change from paper to digital. I also discuss information security, the role of suppliers and socially acceptable costs of electronic data exchange. Finally, in the second part of this letter, I also discuss reuse of information for better care tomorrow and the international context.
Download the full House letter here.
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