US: Management Association for Private Photogrammetric Surveyors (MAPPS) has asked Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary, Health and Human Services (HHS), to create a geospatial management office (GMO) to oversee the implementation of the 800+ location-based provisions within the recently enacted health care reform legislation.
Jeff Lovin, MAPPS President, in a March 26 letter to the Secretary, said, “As Congress worked to pass health care reform legislation, the House and Senate did not include a provision to assure that GIS technology links health data to geography for the purpose of efficiently implementing the legislation and delivering health care services. There are 814 references to location or geographic data that require place-based information in the health care reform legislation. Notwithstanding all of these disparate needs for geospatial data, Congress failed to create a GMO within HHS to coordinate the collection, management, utilization, and sharing of the required geospatial data activities. Moreover, the legislation lacks a provision establishing a Health Care GIS at the Department level.”
Lovin noted that the National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC) has already recommended a Geographic Information Officer (GIO) in each Cabinet department.
Source: MAPPS
