The Beat
HLTH: Transforming Healthcare with CAQH: Erin Weber and Don Rucker on Data Quality and Interoperability
About Erin Weber:
Erin Richter Weber is a healthcare leader with 14 years at CAQH. She oversees CAQH CORE, advancing healthcare automation, and CAQH Insights, producing the annual Index report. Erin unites stakeholders to address industry challenges through data-driven innovation. Previously, she consulted for PwC and led research at the Advisory Board Company. She holds a Master’s from Harvard and a Bachelor’s from Cornell, making her a pivotal voice in healthcare standards and policy.
About Don Rucker:
Dr. Donald Rucker is the Chief Strategy Officer of 1upHealth and former National Coordinator for Health IT at HHS (2017–2021). He led the ONC’s 21st Century Cures Act Interoperability Rule, enabling secure patient access to health data via standardized FHIR APIs. A board-certified physician with clinical informatics expertise, he co-developed the first Windows-based electronic medical record. Dr. Rucker holds degrees from Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford, blending medicine, technology, and leadership.
Things You’ll Learn:
- Provider data is the backbone of the healthcare system, powering everything from patient care to billing, and requires standardization to ensure accuracy.
- The healthcare industry needs to learn from the internet and establish a system similar to domain name services to reduce friction.
- Data quality is paramount for interoperability, requiring standardized definitions of data elements like location. To improve data, AI should be included.
- AI can be used to standardize the multiple sources of provider data by merging them and enhancing the quality of that data.
- The healthcare industry is behind other industries, and boldness comes from adopting solutions that have already been implemented elsewhere.
Resources:
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