Health IT Standards & Committees

In the last two blogs we talked about Meaningful Use and benefits of EHR adoption in these changing times.  In the coming years we will see lot more debate and discussion as IT becomes more integrated in terms of how medical care is delivered in the US.  That is where the role of Federal government comes in. Let us take a closer look at how Federal government is trying to shape the IT standards and protocols when it comes to practicing medicines at clinics and hospitals at facilities across the country.  The caveat for the reader is that it will be a high level view.  And, hopefully, the take away for the reader will be to a somewhat better understanding in terms of keeping track of federal and government initiatives in the months to come!

Understanding Health IT Policies & Committees

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) provided for the creation of an HIT Policy Committee under the auspices of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). The HIT Policy Committee is charged with making recommendations to the National Coordinator for Health IT on a policy framework for the development and adoption of a nationwide health information infrastructure, including standards for the exchange of patient medical information.

The HIT Policy Committee has several workgroups to further the work of the FACA Committee.  The HIT Policy Committee’s workgroups are: 

• Meaningful Use Workgroup
• Certification/Adoption Workgroup
• Information Exchange Workgroup
• NHIN Workgroup, Strategic Planning Workgroup
• Privacy & Security Policy Workgroup
• Enrollment Workgroup

 Details: http://healthit.hhs.gov/portal/server.pt/community/healthit_hhs_gov__health_it_policy_committee

Health IT Standards Committee: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) also provided for the creation of an HIT Standards Committee under the auspices of the FACA. The HIT Standards Committee is charged with making recommendations to the National Coordinator on standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria for the electronic exchange and use of health information. The HIT Standards Committee will focus on the policies developed by the Health IT Policy Committee.  The HIT Standards Committee also includes several workgroups to further the work of the FACA. These workgroups are: Clinical Operations Workgroup, Clinical Quality Workgroup, Privacy & Security Workgroup, and Implementation Workgroup.

Details:http://healthit.hhs.gov/portal/server.pt/community/healthit_hhs_gov__health_it_standards_committee.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) also supports the efforts of several related initiatives to facilitate nationwide adoption of health IT.  Such initiatives include:

• State-Level Health Initiatives: Initiatives designed to ensure that states and regional efforts to achieve health information exchange (HIE) are aligned with the national agenda. 
• Nationwide Health Information Network: A collection of standards, protocols, legal agreements, specifications, and services to enable secure HIE.
• Federal Health Architecture: An e-government line of business initiative to increase efficiency and effectiveness in all government operations.
• Adoption: An initiative supporting two national health IT adoption surveys: one of physician offices and one of hospitals.
• Clinical Decision Support & the CDS Collaboratory: An initiative to provide clinicians, staff, patients or other individuals with knowledge and person-specific information, intelligently filtered or presented at appropriate times, to enhance health and health care.

Needless to say, these organizations are meet regularly, organize events, forums, trade shows, etc., where lot of information is shared and disseminated. To track changing healthcare IT environment, it is perhaps critical for a technology vendor to be a part of such discussions and announcements.  

We suggest at least visiting the URL http://healthit.hhs.gov/portal on a regular basis (if attending and participating in related formus and events is not an option) to stay abreast as HITECH unfolds for the physician community!