The House of Representatives reportedly is planning to hold a health week beginning June 20. The marquee attraction may be H.R. 4157, the Health Information Technology Improvement Act of 2006. As noted in a prior entry, the Ways and Means Committee’s health subcommittee reported out a version of the bill that mandated health plans to implement the new ANSI 5010 837 standard electronic claim in March 2009 and the ICD-10 diagnosis and inpatient procedure coding system in September 2009. (The full Committee has not scheduled a markup of this bill yet.)

AHIP urged Congress to delay ICD-10 implementation until 2012. On June 8, the Energy and Commerce Committee’s health subcommittee reported out a different version of HR 4157, titled the Better Health Information System Act that does not include the ICD-10 mandate, among other differences between the two bills. (A victory for common sense.) The full Energy and Commerce Committee plans to mark up this bill tomorrow morning. It appears that the Energy and Commerce version of the bill has the big mo. (Meanwhile the medical community continues to question the financial and time investments required for HIT implementation.)

The Senate already has passed a bipartisan health information technology bill, S. 1418.