Recently President Obama signed the 21^st Century Cures Act, codifying a broad and far-reaching effort to achieve medical breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s and other debilitating afflictions through improved, streamlined, well-funded research.

The Cures Act gives particular attention to cancer and Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative, which hopes to transform research and make certain varieties of the illness either manageable or history. It also will have major impacts on the treatment of mental illness and substance abuse, and on healthcare IT,  particularly in mandating nation wide interoperability. Here are the highlights:

“God willing, this bill will literally, not figuratively, literally save lives,” Biden said at the signing ceremony. “But most of all what it does … is gives millions of Americans hope. There’s probably not a one of you in this audience or anyone listening to this who hasn’t had a family member or friend or someone touched by cancer.”

The Cancer Moonshot illustrates well how most of the Cures Act focuses on research and additional funding for the National Institutes of Health and similar agencies. But it also focuses on bettering the current provision of healthcare by improving behavioral health care and healthcare IT.

Viewed from a high level, Congress is focused on stemming the tide of mental illness and opioid addiction in America, as well as making sure healthcare information flows freely and safely among providers to improve patient care. Read on for highlights.

Mental Illness and Addiction

Via the specific proposals below, the Cures Act endeavors to better fund mental health care and opiate addiction, improve leadership and planning, ramp up research, enforce parity and improve preparedness among police and in the legal system.

• Over the next two years, the Cures Act provides $1 billion in state grants for opioid abuse prevention and treatment. Specific parts of the proposal include prescription drug monitoring, healthcare provider training and better access to treatment programs. Indeed, block grants to state agencies are clearly aimed at helping individuals break out of the addiction cycle that so often includes homelessness and limited family support.
• Grants will also go to higher education and professional training programs to put more mental health professionals in the field.
• The Act also creates new positions—an assistant secretary for mental health and substance use, and a chief medical officer—in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
• Apparently not a sanctioned SAMHSA component previously, the Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality is now codified in the Cures Act, as is the requirement that SAMHSA create a strategic plan every four years to identify priorities and strengthen the mental health workforce.
• Mostly through reauthorizations, the Cures Act provides funds for mental health programs that pay specific attention to some vulnerable populations: college students, women and children.
• Mental health parity, already a law but sometimes inadequately enforced, will become more of a focus for HHS, which is being asked to draw up a federal and state compliance action plan.

Healthcare IT

While there are efforts in the Cures Act to improve the functionality of EHRs and access to records for patients, the real focus is on improving the flow of information.

• Apparently fed up with allegations of information blocking, Congress included in the Cures Act $15 million in funding for improved interoperability and less information blocking. Some of the money will support a voluntary framework for information exchange and some will go to HHS to investigate claims of information blocking and punish the blockers to the tune of $1 million per violation. The Government Accounting Office is also required to evaluate patient access to personal health information and why it might sometimes be difficult to get.
• Congress is also requiring HHS to change the terms of Meaningful Use / MIPS to include interoperability. Moving forward, healthcare IT vendors must develop application programming interfaces (APIs) and apply real-world tests of interoperability to EHR systems.
• If the Cures Act has a measurable impact, EHRs will become more patient-centric. Incorporated language speaks to making patient records more simple and easier to use, and continuing to grow Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) to expand patient access to care.
• A new HIT Advisory Committee will make recommendations to the national coordinator on a host of healthcare IT concerns. Of particular interest will be the segmentation of data so that only select parts of a patient record can be shared and sensitive data related to mental illness and drug addiction can be closely controlled.
• The Advisory Committee will also have the authority to make recommendations on population health, healthcare for children, telemedicine and other potential improvements to healthcare available through IT.

At nearly 1000 pages, the Cures Act obviously includes much more than the greatest hits included here.

As with all federal legislation, efficacy is measured by impact over time, not number of pages or total appropriations. With the Cures Act, we can hope that the grant money will make a significant difference at the local level and that patient health information will flow more freely between coordinated providers. A cancer breakthrough wouldn’t hurt, either.