Contact: Katie Glenn, kglenn@acc.org, 202-375-6472

WASHINGTON (Mar 17, 2015) -

American College of Cardiology President Kim Allan Williams Sr., M.D., FACC, issued the following statement in response to today's Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on "America's Health IT Transformation: Translating the Promise of Electronic Health Records into Better Care:"

"Today's Senate HELP committee hearing on electronic health records (EHRs) offered vital insights into the importance of improving EHRs so they may provide clinicians and patients necessary access to data as we move toward team-based care. For EHRs to truly achieve their promise, clinicians must have the ability to share and exchange data with other clinicians, patients, and colleagues. This information, once de-identified, must also be accessible to other data users, such as clinical data registries like those operated by the ACC, which set benchmarks for quality use and care and create guidelines to improve patient outcomes. Unfortunately, some EHR vendors actively prevent the sharing of information through costly or burdensome technical interfaces. The ACC urges Congress to take steps to eliminate data blocking and to take steps to enable a more open exchange of data so that clinicians can work toward their most important goal: improving patient outcomes."

The American College of Cardiology is a 49,000-member medical society that is the professional home for the entire cardiovascular care team. The mission of the College is to transform cardiovascular care and to improve heart health. The ACC leads in the formation of health policy, standards and guidelines. The College operates national registries to measure and improve care, provides professional medical education, disseminates cardiovascular research and bestows credentials upon cardiovascular specialists who meet stringent qualifications. For more information, visit acc.org.

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