Josie King Act of 2004 or Quality, Efficiency, Standards, and Technology for Health Care Transformation Act of 2004 - Allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services (Secretary) to award grants and offer loans to health information infrastructure organizations and States to develop, implement, and maintain health information exchanges.
Requires the Secretaries of Health and Human Services, Defense, and Veteran Affairs to: (1) adopt data standards for the interoperability of health information technology systems; and (2) incorporate measures of health care practitioner performance into their health care programs.
Requires the Secretary to establish a methodology for adjusting Medicare payments for providers who participate in a health information exchange or use other such technology.
Requires the Director of the Agency for Healthcare Resources and Quality to enter into an agreement with the Institute of Medicine to establish the Consortium for Health Outcomes Research Priorities to: (1) establish priorities for research relating to the effectiveness and efficiency of health care; and (2) identify priorities for developing standardized measures of health care provider performance.
Allows the Director to award grants for scholarships to health care professionals to earn advanced degrees in the field of health care quality and patient safety.
Requires the Secretary to establish a claims-based and a clinical-based practitioner performance database. Allows group health plans to submit data to the claims-based database in exchange for Medicare claims data. Requires such contributions to the database after 4 years. Allows health care practitioners to submit data to the clinical-based database.
Allows the Secretary to provide for Medicare payment adjustments based on performance measurements of physicians and institutions.