ONC releases 10-year plan for HIT interoperability.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of National Coordinator (ONC) has taken the brunt of criticism by health information technology (HIT) stakeholders, legislators and industry experts as to why, with millions in taxpayer dollars spent on incentives to encourage the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs), better HIT is still not saving the nation much money.

In a first-of-its-kind 10-year plan from the ONC, the department charged with implementing the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act subtly fires back at its critics and points out that considering where the healthcare industry started from, significant progress has indeed been made. It also goes on the offensive with its own plan for how the type of interoperability between systems that is necessary to really reduce waste, improve care and save money can be achieved in the next 10 years.    

According to the report, in the next three years, the ONC will work with stakeholders to develop an interoperability roadmap. It will also use its leverage as a standard setter and certifier of EHR systems to encourage the types of changes needed to allow information recorded in one system to be shared with other systems while also addressing immediate pressing issues such as data reliability and problems with matching up the right data with the right patient.

Looking further out, in the next six years, the ONC says it expects to then play a role in leveraging advances in interoperability into “team-based care” that crosses boundaries between organizations, so that for example even unaffiliated hospitals and physician offices can provide seamless coordinated care for patients that pass back and forth between them. It also expects that providers will be able to aggregate information about patients from a broad range of outside sources, such as different health plans, in order to engage in true population health management.

Finally, in 10 years, it expects interoperability of HIT systems to have reached the point where there will be real measurable improvements in both health research and public health that can save money.

Actions the ONC plans to take include:

1. Continuing to be involved in developing core technical standards and functions through its Standards & Interoperability (S&I) Framework.
2. Using the ONC Health IT Certification Program to make sure HIT developers conform to the technical standards necessary for systems that exchanging data with other systems.
3. Playing an active role in ensuring patient privacy protection as HIT systems become more interoperable.
4. Changing policies and payment systems to eliminate barriers and create financial incentives interoperability and electronic health information exchange.
5. Establishing a governance mechanism for the nationwide health information network called for in the HITECH act.