AAFP on HIT strategic plan: 'Ease the burden'

"Ease the administrative burden physicians face and build on goals set a decade ago," wrote the American Association of Family Physicians (AAFP) in a letter to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) responding to the agency's Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020, which was released in December.

The plan outlines five goals for national health IT, including expanding health IT adoption, strengthening healthcare delivery and advancing research, scientific knowledge and innovation.

"This strategic plan provides a blueprint to move forward, and we must now define and implement its tactics," said AAFP Board Chair Reid Blackwelder, MD, of Kingsport, Tenn.

Blackwelder praised ONC for its work, but urged greater focus on population health management, care coordination and patient engagement.

"From the perspective of a practice, the myriad of regulations and rules from multiple agencies places a heavy administrative burden (on physicians)," he wrote. "As efforts across agencies can be harmonized and, where possible, combined, it could significantly decrease this burden on practices."

He urged a "continued focus on value" and suggested that could mean simplifying regulations and eliminating waste.

Blackwelder pointed out that the ONC's goals of collecting and sharing health information were "indistinguishable" from the goals and objectives that were to have been achieved during the previous decade.

"We are concerned that work has not been done to determine why these goals have not been achieved during the past 10 or more years and how the tactics and activities of the next 10 years will be different," Blackwelder said.

AAFP has its own health IT strategic plan for the next 10 years, he said, noting that interoperability and usability were "top of mind" for family physicians.

"Given the breadth and depth of the work that could be initiated around health IT, we are concerned that resources may be spread so thin that no significant achievements are made toward the goals laid out in the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan," said Blackwelder.

He encouraged ONC to focus on the key capabilities healthcare organizations and physicians really need to move forward and specifically identified population health management, care coordination and patient engagement as worth ONC's immediate attention.