IT experts tell Senate to nudge, not legislate, for interoperability

Health information technology experts told a U.S. Senate health committee that they need to use persuasion rather than legislation to fix problems with the multibillion-dollar federal health IT program.

The hearing focused on the decades-old problem of exchanging patient information between healthcare organizations' electronic healthcare-record systems, a lack of so-called interoperability. 

Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) called the inability to exchange health information “a glaring failure.”