CMS working to coordinate HIT efforts

National Health IT Week serves as an opportunity to share federal strategies and objectives for programs such as Meaningful Use, ICD-10, quality measurements, administrative simplification and health information exchange, said Robert Tagalicod, director of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Office of eHealth & Standards, in an interview with Clinical Innovation + Technology.

The recognition week is a good time to focus on the wide range of activity and future goals because federal fiscal years run from October to October. “We’re wholly focused on doing things we’ve identified to move ehealth forward.  [CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner] tasked us to ensure that ehealth is not just for big providers and vendors but also for small and rural providers.”

“There’s a lot happening in 2014,” he said, referring to ongoing Meaningful Use requirements and the implementation of ICD-10 next October. When asked about the numerous calls for more time for Stage 2, Tagalicod said, “we’re not unsympathetic. We’re in listening mode right now. We want to make sure we hear intelligence unvarnished and plan accordingly. There is a discussion to be had regarding an extension of the reporting period and that’s a conversation we’re open to.”

During a webinar outlining his office’s efforts, Tagalicod discussed the construction of the building blocks that will become the federal health IT infrastructure. The essential building blocks are there but he said the need now is determining the priorities. “What are the right building blocks that fit in the right time at the right place to get to the outcome we’re talking about?”

Tagalicod said health and ehealth are rapidly becoming indistinguishable. “There is not a significant difference as we talk about it more and more. For now, the ehealth distinction is useful when talking about standards but the difference does disappear in the final analysis.”

Patient engagement has underpinned just about all health IT conversations and initiatives this year and Tagalicod said it is “consistent with our own quality strategy, which is patient-centered care.” With the explosion in interest, “how we get information to and from the consumer is just as important as how we get information from provider to provider and provider to health plan. This is a new data ecosystem in which we empower individuals toward the triple aim of better health, better outcomes and reduced costs.”

CMS has a history of patient engagement, he said, largely through mymedicare.gov. “It’s always been about the patient. This is not something new but it is something we want to be conscious of.”

Looking ahead, Tagalicod said he thinks that by 2014 National Health IT Week, great strides will be made interoperability, standards and normalization of data. “The next step is determining what kind of information we need to gather through these standards and analytics to affect outcomes, which is part of Stage 3. With the infrastructure we’re building right now, we’re poised to move from essential standards to looking at interoperability towards outcomes and the essential quality measures we need to look at to move the agenda forward.”