This week in Health IT: HITPC adjusts to prepare for the future

The Health IT Policy Committee this week gave some significant signs of things to come with a restructuring of work groups, endorsing best practices regarding Meaningful Use Stage 2 and launching a new accountable care work group.

National Coordinator for Health IT Karen DeSalvo, MD, MPH, MSc, presented a proposed restructuring of HITPC work groups designed to support the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s (ONC's) priorities, which include evolving from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act structure, developing a federal health IT strategic plan; developing a national consensus agenda, Meaningful Use, advancing health IT tools in support of the triple aim and health information exchange, use and infrastructure.

"It's really important that we enhance not just the form but the communication of all these work groups so we're reducing redundancy and the potential for reactive work," she said. "We want to be as strategic and forward thinking as possible."

The Health IT Policy Committee also formally endorsed best practices regarding the Meaningful Use Stage 2 requirement to allow patients to view, download and transmit (VDT) their personal health information to family, friends and personal representatives of adult patients.

Privacy & Security Tiger Team Chair Deven McGraw, director of the health privacy project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, received board approval to encourage the ONC to develop and disseminate several best practices when it comes to allowing VDT access for a family member, friend or personal representative.

The new Accountable Care Work Group “took a broader purview than what might appear in Meaningful Use recommendations,” said co-chair Charles Kennedy, MD, head of Aetna Aligned Care Solutions in Hartford, Conn. “That was a conscious decision strongly supported by all members.”

The work group’s formal charge is to provide a set of recommendations to the HITPC regarding how ONC and the Department of Health & Human Services can advance priority health IT capabilities in a variety of accountable care arrangements to support improvements in care and health while reducing costs.  

“I think this is a very important opportunity as we have worked over the past several years trying to deploy technology that achieves the triple aim, then have that retarded by the very payment system that supports our healthcare infrastructure,” Kennedy said. “Accountable care really represents an opportunity to have both financial incentives as well as underlying technologies align in a common direction associated with the triple aim.”

Beth Walsh

Clinical Innovation + Technology editor