HITPC: Focus on HIT safety plan strategies

The new health IT patient safety action and surveillance plan is designed to advance patient safety in an increasing health IT-enabled healthcare system, said Jodi G. Daniel, JD, MPH, director of the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT’s (ONC's) Office of Policy and Planning, during the July 9 Health IT Policy Committee meeting.

Health IT is increasingly integrated with new and rapidly evolving healthcare delivery and relevant technologies so there is a need for deliberate and coordinated action by both government and the private sector, she said.

The goal is to use health IT to make healthcare safer, Daniel said, and continuously improve the safety of health IT. The safety plan is a joint effort across the Department of Health and Human Services and builds on existing patient safety programs.

The plan uses three strategies: learn, improve and lead, Daniel said. “We want to increase the quantity and quality of data and knowledge about HIT safety, target resources and corrective actions to improve health IT safety and patient safety and promote a culture of safety related to HIT. We know that there is never one factor that contributes to a safety event. There needs to be shared responsibility among those developing and using products and the government overseeing a lot of these efforts.”

Going forward, the office plans to develop an appropriate risk-based regulatory framework that promotes safety and innovation and reduces regulatory duplication which will complement the actions of the safety plan, she said.

In other efforts, Daniel said her office has established an expectation that beginning in 2014, ONC-authorized certification bodies (ACB) will perform live surveillance of safety-related capabilities and developers’ complaint processes, particularly those related to safety. Four categories include exchange capabilities, safety-related capabilities, security requirements and population management. “ONC-ACBs will be encouraged to make the surveillance results public. We hope to gain some good information.”

Doug Fridsma, MD, PhD, chief science officer and director of the ONC’s Office of Science and Technology, discussed ONC’s standards and interoperability initiative portfolio. A structured data capture effort is focusing on a granular way of describing data and gathering data in a structured way, he said. “Data access as well as structured data capture allows us to extend the capabilities of EHRs and health IT to get data in a structured way and release or provide data in a structured way to get the ecosystem that drives improvements.”

ONC also kicked off its first international initiative—a collaborative activity between the U.S. and the European Union. It involves a “common set of standards that we hope will drive market innovation.”