Mostashari highlights ONC's 2011 scores
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“ONC earned its nickname as the ‘Office of No Christmas’ during the 2009 holiday season roughly two years ago when we, along with our colleagues at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), announced the proposed regulations to govern the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs,” wrote Mostashari. “A year later, by the 2010 holiday season, vendors, newly accredited certification bodies and a few vanguard providers were gearing up for the official launch of the EHR Incentive programs, which opened for registration on Jan. 3, 2011.”
Mostashari went on to highlight 10 “notable developments in the world of health IT and ONC,” including:
January: Launch of the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs
As of the blog posting, there are more than 1,500 EHRs--about 1,000 ambulatory and 500 inpatient EHRs--that have been certified by one of six private sector Authorized Testing and Certification Bodies selected by the ONC, according to the National Coordinator for Health IT. “More than 20,000 eligible professionals and 1,200 hospitals have already received their incentive payments from CMS, totaling $1.8 billion so far, with December shaping up to be the biggest month yet.
February: Launch of Direct
The Direct Project provides a means for providers and other participants to send encrypted health information directly to recipients over the internet. During 2011, the Direct Project went from publishing its first set of consensus-approved specifications to testing in pilots, to initial production implementation across vendor and state boundaries.
March: The National Quality Strategy
The Department for Health & Human Services released the National Quality Strategy for health improvement, an effort to create a national framework to help guide local, state and national efforts to improve the quality of care in the U.S.
April: Launch of the Standards “Summer Camp”
"One of the major accomplishments of summer camp was reaching consensus around Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture,” wrote Mostashari. “For the first time in our country’s history, there is a single, broadly-supported electronic data standard for patient care transitions!”
July: Health IT Workforce:
Within the health field, the fastest growth in workforce has been among IT-related health workers, which added more than 50,000 jobs from 2008 to 2010. In July, ONC open-sourced health IT curriculum was implemented and tested in the community college program that graduates health IT professionals. “As of November 2011, the universities have produced more than 500 post-graduate and masters-level health IT professionals, with more than 1,700 expected to graduate by July 2013,” Mostashari noted.
October: Regional Extension Centers Surpass their Goals
ONC has funded 62 regional extension centers (RECs) nationwide and a national Health IT Research Center (HITRC) to help overcome the barriers to adoption and meaningful use. In addition, ONC also put healthit.gov, a web-based information resource that serves as a “virtual 63rd REC,” on the internet. As of mid-December, the REC program had enrolled over 116,000 priority primary care providers, exceeding the 100,000 goal for the end of 2011.
November: Growth in the Adoption of EHRs
“The growth in EHR adoption has been accompanied by a sharp increase in the number of providers using EHRs to electronically prescribe,” he added. “Data show that 42 percent of non-hospital based physicians are submitting electronic prescriptions through an EHR system, more than a fivefold increase since 2000. In addition, a startling 93 percent of pharmacies are now capable of receiving electronic prescriptions.”
To read the full blog post, click here.