42 U.S.C. § 299b–3 — Information systems for health care improvement

(a) In general To encourage new ways of managing and sharing health information, the Agency must research and support work to advance: (1) Using information systems to study health care quality and outcomes, including comparing performance data by individual provider and by health plan. (2) Training health care workers and researchers to use information systems. (3) Building effective links between different sources of health information, including information networks. (4) Delivering and coordinating evidence-based care, including real-time computer tools that support health care decisions. (5) Making health information data and medical vocabularies more useful and comparable, by working with federal, state, and private groups on content, structure, definitions, and coding. (6) Using computer-based health records in every setting, to build personal health records for individual use and to track public health and outcomes across populations. (7) Protecting individually identifiable information used in health services research and quality improvement work. (b) Demonstration. The Agency must support test projects for new information tools that help patients and caregivers make shared decisions. (c) Facilitating public access to information. The Director must work with public and private groups to help the public access information about health care quality and consumer satisfaction.