ONC issues plan for quality improvement

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) released a paper that describes its "vision for advancing the use of health IT to support transformational improvement in healthcare quality and value," according to a post on the Health IT Buzz blog.

Health IT Enabled Quality Improvement: A Vision to Achieve Better Health and Health Care invites health IT stakeholders to join ONC in shaping the future with a renewed focus on health and care quality as the “why” that aligns with the “what” of interoperable health information systems, according to the post written by Jacob Reider, MD, deputy national coordinator and Capt. Alicia Morton, DNP, RN-BC, director of ONC's Health IT Certification Program.

The new paper is similar to ongoing inteoperability plans, they said, in that the building blocks are interdependent and progress must be incremental over the next decade for a "converged emphasis on improvement of care quality," they wrote. That will require use of the same technical standards, strategic use of certification and testing, incorporation of the same strong privacy and security protections, business, clinical and regulatory environments that support both effective, user-friendly quality improvement tools and appropriate exchange and use of health information to support easy use of those tools, and development of rules of engagement and governance that facilitate availability and use of quality improvement functions and the information on which they will rely.

"ONC cannot achieve the health IT-enabled quality improvement vision alone," the authors wrote. "We will work collaboratively and transparently with stakeholders to develop shared national goals for three, six and 10-year timeframes that will serve as milestones on our shared journey to achieve this vision as an integral part of the nation’s future."