Pharmacy operators form Health Information Trust Alliance

This week another force emerged from the private sector to take the lead on health information technology, a coalition of more than 50 pharmacy operators, healthcare companies and technology vendors known as the Health Information Trust Alliance.

Who is HiTrust, as the group calls itself? It’s such companies as CVS Caremark, McKesson, Humana and Johnson & Johnson. Why HiTrust? To ensure that in a world of digitized health records, that the security of that information is appropriately safeguarded without unfounded patient privacy paranoia derailing all of the positives that HIT could deliver this country.

“Our focus is to increase trust in how health information is managed,” explained Dan Nukis, HiTrust CEO. “We want to lower costs, reduce risks, increase efficiency and decrease complexity.”

In the case of HiTrust, “trust” is a key word. As our government wrestles with the challenge of how to fix health care, lawmakers need to trust the private sector to lead us in the right direction. Because when you take a really close look at it all, you realize that so far, the private sector has led the way on much of what seems to constitute “health reform” in this country.