Relating to health data including the collection and use of hospital data and including effective date and retroactive applicability provisions

2019 Iowa Acts, House File 766, directed the department of public health (DPH) to enter into a memorandum of understanding with a contractor selected through a request for proposals process, rather than with the Iowa hospital association, to act as the department’s intermediary in collecting, maintaining, and disseminating hospital inpatient, outpatient, and ambulatory data, and further directed DPH to continue the memorandum of understanding with the Iowa hospital association until the contractor selected through a request for proposals process assumed the duties of intermediary on January 1, 2021. The bill changes the transition period for continuation of the memorandum of understanding from January 1, 2021, to July 1, 2021. The bill also requires that the request for proposals to select a contractor prohibit the contractor from charging a hospital a fee for access to or submission of data collected by the contractor from a hospital in the state, and that the request for proposals be issued by July 1, 2020, and the contract with the contractor selected be executed by October 1, 2020. The bill establishes a health data work group to evaluate the health data needs of the state. In addition to the members of the data sharing and use work group of the Iowa healthcare innovation and visioning roundtable established in 2017, the work group membership shall include a member of the rural Iowa community health alliance representing a critical access hospital and a representative of a rural prospective payment system hospital. The work group is tasked with continuing the work of the roundtable by implementing and building on the real time healthcare information strategy, the data privacy strategy, and the oversight strategy recommended by the data sharing and use work group of the roundtable as submitted in September 2018, and the data steering committee update and recommendations submitted in June 2019 relating to the governance model for and the functionality of the Iowa health information network. The work group shall submit an initial report to the governor and the general assembly by June 1, 2020, and periodic progress reports on the implementation of recommendations, measures, and milestones of success, and any future actions thereafter. The bill takes effect upon enactment, and certain provisions are retroactively applicable to July 1, 2019.