Healthcare Leadership Council Statement on House Passage of 21st Century Cures Legislation
The Healthcare Leadership Council, a coalition of chief executives of the nation’s leading healthcare companies and organizations representing all health sectors, believes the U.S. House of Representatives has taken an important step in recognizing the need to strengthen and accelerate medical innovation with its passage of the 21st Century Cures Act.
In our nation today, with devastating chronic diseases affecting tens of millions of Americans and the opportunity presented by advances in medical knowledge to protect and extend lives, modernizing the discovery and development of new treatments and cures must be a national priority. Passage of the House legislation acknowledges this priority. We now look forward to working with the U.S. Senate to optimize the measure to more rapidly move innovative ideas from laboratories to patients and consumers. Congress has an important role to play in enabling the breakthroughs being developed by America’s innovation-based companies to move more rapidly from laboratories to patients and consumers.
In addition to speeding clinical trial processes and removing regulatory barriers that currently impede the pace of innovation, we believe a final bill must build upon provisions in the House bill that promote the interoperability of health data systems, modernize patient privacy rules to maximize use of health databases for medical research, and provide enhanced regulatory clarity concerning health-related software. We believe, as well, that the 21st Century Cures platform provides an important opportunity to promote telehealth as a valuable tool to improve and extend healthcare delivery, and the House should be commended for recognizing in its legislation the importance of telehealth.
During Senate debate on this topic, and in reconciling the House and Senate versions, it is critical that Congress ensure that all sectors of American healthcare remain strong and well equipped to meet the growing needs of the patient population. Any financing provisions must not weaken one sector of the healthcare system to enhance another.
The months ahead, as this legislation advances, will be vitally important ones for millions of families and individuals seeking better health and answers to the diseases that exact such a heavy social and economic toll on our society. Once more we applaud bipartisan U.S. House passage. We look forward to working with Congress to finalize legislation that has the greatest possible impact on our present and future, and ensures a stable healthcare environment that always puts the patient first.
