Okla. Senate panel kills bill to abolish trust

The Senate Health and Human Services Committee voted 4-4 for the bill by freshman Sen. Nathan Dahm. A tie vote means the bill fails to pass.

Dahm, a self-described Constitutional conservative, said he introduced the bill at the request of several conservative grass-roots organizations and expressed his concern that the Oklahoma Health Information Exchange Trust was a state vehicle to incur more federal debt by receiving grant money.

"This isn't the only thing that I'm working on," Dahm, R-Broken Arrow, said after the bill's defeat. "Everything I'm working on, I'm trying to get back to the free market, trying to get the government out of our affairs, whether it's federal or state."

Dr. Robert Roswell, the trust's chairman and senior associate dean at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, said the trust is a state-based beneficiary that helps physicians and hospitals that have acquired an electronic health record to be able to share information and communicate with other physicians.

"Electronic health records are already here and they're here to stay," Roswell told the panel. "I'm sorry, that's the way it is."