ONC developing new health IT implementation tracking system

To comply with the Privacy Act of 1974, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) is developing a new record keeping system, the ONC Health IT Dashboard, to assess, improve and publicize the effectiveness of federal grants administered for health IT implementation, according to a notice published by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the Federal Register on Dec. 22, 2011.

ONC will create datasets within the ONC Health IT Dashboard to evaluate health IT implementation, to compare ONC evaluations against grantees’ progress reports, to share evaluations with grantees and to make aggregate data publicly available on the ONC website, according to the notice. The new record keeping system will not make available any data on providers or patients that are protected by the Privacy Act.

Data available on providers will include information on the health IT systems they use, demographic records, contact information and National Provider Identifier (NPI). Data will be accessible to employees of the ONC, federal agencies, state agencies and contracted employees as allowed by law. Safeguards to protect the data will conform to standards established by the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 and the National Institutes for Standards in Technology (NIST).

Policies outlined in the notice will become effective 30 days after its publication.

The notice is available in its entirety here.