Trump and the Digital Quality Transformation
To modernize health care infrastructure, the Trump administration seeks a major change. Levitt Partners’ suggestions include increased use of APIs.
Despite their promise, outdated systems, inconsistent policy support and lack of trust between payers and providers have slowed the widespread use of APIs.
Levitt Partners proposes a regional "tables of trust" approach to drive adoption technology by shifting federal policy towards API certification, ultimately aiming to modernize data exchange, improve quality and reduce burden.
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About The Guest
Ryan Howells is a nationally recognized digital health policy and interoperability expert based out of the Leavitt Partners Washington, D.C. office, who regularly works with the White House, Congress, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Veteran Health Administration (VHA). Since 2016, Ryan has led the CARIN Alliance, which has advanced consumer-directed exchange using Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) application programming interfaces (APIs). CARIN’s work has been implemented in production across the U.S., named as an “industry best practice” in multiple federal regulations, and received a World Changing Idea Award by Fast Company magazine.
Episode Description
In the second episode of our special series on recommendations to the Trump administration, Quality Matters host Andy Reynolds welcomes Ryan Howells, Principal at Leavitt Partners, for an illuminating discussion on transforming digital quality and data exchange.
Ryan shares fresh ideas from the Leavitt Partners roadmap to reshape digital health infrastructure by embracing scalable, internet-based standards and dismantling policy barriers. At the core of this conversation is that effective data exchange must be powered not only by modern standards, but by trust among people and institutions.
Ryan’s suggestions include:
- Implementing APIs at scale to reduce manual processes and administrative waste. The same APIs that power everyday apps can streamline data exchange between payers and providers, replacing faxes, phone calls and redundant forms.
- Certifying data exchange—not just software functionality. Instead of dictating how systems are built, federal policy should focus on certifying APIs, allowing EHR vendors the flexibility to innovate while helping ensure that data flows freely.
- Establishing “tables of trust.” Regional collaboration among payers, providers and government agencies can test new digital infrastructure in real-world settings and be the model for national expansion.
Digital quality transformation will require more than just tech upgrades—we must rethink relationships, trust and policy levers. Listen to this episode to learn how the Trump administration could support a data-driven revolution in health care quality.
The best representation of whether we are making progress is, I don’t want to ever go into a doctor’s office and fill out a clipboard. If I could just not fill out my health history, my demographic information, whether information should be sent to my doctor—if all that is just in the doctor’s system—I would say we have made progress. Because at that point it will be real to the individual.
Think about it in terms of digitizing all of the health care data and making sure it is with the right person, at the right time, in the right place to make the right decisions. When that happens, we’ll know we’ve made significant progress.
Timestamps
(02:27) Why Implementing Health Care APIs is Hard
(05:32) Tables of Trust: A Case Study from Utah
(07:03) Scaling Trust and Interoperability
(13:12) Eliminating Manual Processes
(18:23) Solving Diverse Use Cases
(19:36) Encouraging Early Adoption of APIs