ONC official presents Federal Health IT Strategic Plan to HITPC

On the heels of the release of the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan, Seth Pazinski, director of planning, evaluation and analysis at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, shared his high-level thoughts and solicited feedback on the plan at the Dec. 9 Health IT Policy Committee.

The Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020, which was released on Monday, updates the 2011-2015 plan. More than 35 federal agencies participated in drafting the plan. “The plan has a broad perspective, including purchasers, regulators, users, agencies that set health IT policy and ensure pay for care, and federal agencies that focus on community health, funding health and human services, and supporting research,” he said.

“We also looked at many other plans to reflect all the thinking that has already happened in this space,” he added.

Much has transpired since the publication of the first plan, Pazinski said, noting that currently more than 90 percent of hospitals and over 75 percent of eligible professionals have participated in the first round of the Meaningful Use program. “If we accomplished anything, it's 53 pages shorter” than the first plan, he said.

The aim of the plan is threefold: moving beyond healthcare to improve health; advancing health IT beyond EHRs; and using policy and incentive levers beyond Meaningful Use, Pazinski said.

“This is a federal plan. While the plan acknowledges that we can’t accomplish goals without efforts in the private sector, it really focuses on what the federal government will do related to these goals,” he said.

The strategic plan serves as a broad federal strategy setting the context and framing the ONC’s interoperability roadmap slated for release early next year. “The plan is about collecting, sharing and using health information. There was a coming together around interoperability as the top focus of moving forward with this.”

Across the spectrum of collecting, sharing and using health information, he shared the plan’s five primary goals:

• Expand adoption of health IT
• Advance secure and interoperable health information
• Strengthen healthcare delivery
• Advance the health and well-being of individuals and communities
• Advance research, scientific knowledge and innovation

The federal agencies agreed to the following principles to execute these goals: focus on value; respect individual preferences; build a culture of electronic health information access and use; create an environment of continuous learning and improvement; encourage innovation and competition; and be a worthy steward of the country’s money and trust.

The plan includes a mixture of metrics and milestone outcomes, including specifically 3-year and 6-year outcomes, to measure progress, he said. “The intent is to identify priorities around objectives and begin identifying federal agencies’ roles in improving outcomes.”

Pazinski said he hopes that the Health IT Policy Committee, which is slated to present formal feedback to the ONC on the plan in February 2015, will suggest areas to focus on to track performance on the plans.

The public comment period ends on Feb 5, 2015.