ONC unveils health IT strategic plan through 2015
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The updated plan, last published in 2008, now reflects the landscape of health IT and health IT policy that has been altered by the Health IT for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act and the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act, the ONC stated.
The plan described how the ONC will work with federal partners and the private sector to usher in a new era of meaningful use that will harness the power of health IT to improve care and transform the healthcare system.
Building on meaningful use, the plan also addresses how ONC and its federal partners will increase protections to ensure that electronic health information is kept private and secure; empower individuals with access to their electronic health information; and enhance the ability to study care delivery and payment systems.
The updated plan includes five goals, according to the ONC:
1. Achieve adoption and information exchange through meaningful use of health IT: The centerpiece of the government’s health IT strategy during the next five years. “Meaningful use is aimed at widespread adoption and information exchange in its first two stages, and will then build to improved health outcomes in the third stage,” according to the overview.
2. Improve care, improve population health and reduce healthcare costs through the use of health IT: Specifies ways that health IT is contributing to improved care, improved population health and reduced per-capita healthcare costs. These include widespread adoption of EHRs, health information exchanges (HIEs), quality improvement initiatives and healthcare reform pilots.
3. Inspire confidence and trust in health IT: Focuses on government efforts to update its approach to privacy and security issues related to health IT and to build greater confidence and trust in EHRs and HIE among providers and the public.
4. Empower individuals with health IT to improve their health and the healthcare system: Implementing health IT policies and programs that meet individual needs and expectations, provide individuals with access to their information, help facilitate a strong consumer health IT market and better integrate individual and clinician communications through health IT.
5. Achieve rapid learning and technological advancement: Ways health IT and meaningful use can enable innovation and appropriate use of health information to improve knowledge about healthcare across populations. In the long run, the government is pursuing a vision of a “learning health system,” in which healthcare data can be appropriately aggregated, analyzed and leveraged using real-time algorithms and functions, the ONC stated.
Click here to see the complete Federal Health IT Strategic Plan. The public comment period for the plan is now open and will remain so until Friday, April 22 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time. Comments can be submitted electronically here.