Dear Speaker Ryan,
On behalf of the undersigned medical specialty organizations, we applaud you for your
commitment to move a compromise 21st Century Cures bill in the fall. As Senate Majority
Leader McConnell said, this could be the most important legislation Congress passes this year.
The ultimate goal of both the House and the Senate bills is to accelerate innovation, boost
research, streamline drug and device approvals, and enhance health information technology
(HIT) interoperability. We believe these things individually and combined will ultimately
improve patient care and improve outcomes. They will also increase the quality, safety, and
efficiency of health care delivery.
Specifically, the bills include provisions focused on National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding
and boosting innovation. They will help the NIH and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
recruit top talent, improve research focused on women and minorities, and encourage young
investigators. They include a system of more rapidly approving drugs and devices by decreasing
paperwork and streamlining the approval process. Additionally, they will help address the
executive branch “Moonshot Agenda” to find a cure for cancer and advance precision medicine.
The other major focus of both pieces of legislation is on HIT. The stated goals are to improve
and legislate more rapid advancement in interoperability. The HIT provisions aim to reduce the
documentation burden for physicians, improve access to information for patients, and improve
physician access to patient medical records. We are particularly supportive of language included
in the Senate HIT legislation that creates a definition of clinician-led clinical data registries and
requires that HIT vendors share data with those registries as a condition of certification to ensure
such registries have efficient and cost-effective access to clinical outcomes data.
Thank you for your consideration of these views. We look forward to working with you to help
move this proposal through the legislative process.
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