The Health and Human Services Department has issued its plan for achieving President Bush’s goal of an electronic health record for most Americans by 2014.
The strategic plan developed by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology covers the next five years. It embraces not only HHS agencies but also other federal agencies, state and local governments, and the private sector. It repeatedly asserts that multistakeholder collaborative efforts will be needed to get the job done.
The 115-page document outlines two broad goals: patient-focused health care and population health. All the strategies are associated with those goals and have dates for completion.
For example, one of the population health strategies has this milestone: “By 2009, population health-oriented users of information will be able to receive comparable data from different clinical sources through the use of consistent standards in clinical care for the exchange of health information.”
For each goal, four themes are addressed: privacy and security, collaborative governance, adoption and interoperability. The document promises that HHS will have a privacy and security framework for health IT this year.
The plan’s adoption target is 40 percent of physician offices nationwide using e-health records by 2012. This would mean another 11 percent of offices would have to adopt EHRs in the subsequent two years to meet Bush’s goal.
Appendices to the plan provide an unprecedented, 42-page catalog of activities federal agencies are undertaking to advance health IT. Dr. Robert Kolodner, national coordinator for health IT, said in an interview that the document evolved as its scope expanded beyond his office.
Its development was delayed by the need to collect the information from the other agencies and get their agreement on parts of the plan, he said. Although Kolodner didn’t mention it, the plan also was held up in review by the Office of Management and Budget.
Asked whether the plan would still be useful when a new administration takes office in January, Kolodner noted that both major party candidates have included health IT in their health policy proposals. Also, he said, health IT has had the backing of both parties in Congress.
“I expect that the new administration may have a slightly different emphasis,” he said. The strategic plan is meant to be a dynamic document that should be updated often, he added.
Government Health IT presents Liesa Jo Jenkins, executive director of CareSpark, in this recent eSeminar, where she shared her experiences and insight into building a health information exchange that enhances community health, rewards regional collaboration and drives economic progress.
