Health IT Seems To Be Racing Ahead in the US On All Fronts. Wonderful What Leadership and Money Can Do!

The following popped into view a few days ago.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Federal Health IT Activity Heats Up in Q3 2011

by Helen Pfister, Susan Ingargiola and Rachel Sam, Manatt Health Solutions

During the third quarter of 2011, the federal government continued to implement the HITECH Act, which was enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This update summarizes key developments and milestones between July 1 and Sept. 30. 

Third-Quarter Health IT Highlights

The third quarter of 2011 saw a number of high-level developments:

• ONC Releases Final Health IT Strategic Plan. On Sept. 12, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT released a final version of its Federal Health IT Strategic Plan for 2011 through 2015. The plan focuses on five goals: 1.) achieve adoption and information exchange through meaningful use of health IT; 2.) improve care and population health and reduce health care costs through use of health IT; 3.) inspire confidence and trust in health IT; 4.) empower individuals with health IT to improve their health and the health care system; and 5.) achieve rapid learning and technological achievement.
• HHS Secretary Appoints New OCR Director. On Sept. 13, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the appointment of Leon Rodriguez as director of the Office for Civil Rights. Among other things, OCR is responsible for enforcing the HIPAA privacy and security rules.
• President Obama Proclaims National Health IT Week. President Obama issued a proclamation declaring Sept. 11 through Sept. 16 National Health IT Week. The proclamation urged Americans to learn more about the benefits of health IT, take action to increase adoption and meaningful use of health IT and use the information health IT provides to improve the quality, safety and cost effectiveness of health care.

ONC Policy, Standards Committees

Health IT Policy Committee Submits Meaningful Use Stage 2 Appendix to ONC

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Other Health IT Policy Committee Recommendations

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Health IT Standards Committee Recommendations

At its September meeting, the Health IT Standards Committee approved recommendations put forward by the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN) Power Team for technical specifications and standards to support the secure transport and exchange of electronic health information on a national scale through NwHIN and the Direct Project. 

At its August meeting, the committee approved the Surveillance Implementation Guide Power Team's report on standards for health IT-based surveillance systems for population health. 

Also in August, the Standards Committee endorsed the Clinical Quality Measures Workgroup and Vocabulary Task Force joint recommendations on the assignment of code sets to clinical concepts for the purpose of reporting clinical quality measures. 

The recommendations outline the minimum set of vocabulary standards that should apply to each data element included in the 23 categories of clinical concepts defined by the National Quality Forum's Quality Data Model version 3.0. The committee sent the recommendations to ONC on Sept. 9. 

EHR Certification

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Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs

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Health Information Exchange

ONC Launches Two Metadata Initiatives

In September, ONC launched two initiatives to test health information exchange metadata standards under its Standards & Interoperability Framework:

ONC soft launched the Data Segmentation Initiative, which builds on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology recommendation that metadata tags be developed and used for health information exchange. The goal of the initiative is to enable health providers to segment and withhold certain data from exchange. The initiative formally launched Oct. 5.

ONC launched its Query Health Initiative, a public-private collaboration that will establish standards and services for distributed population queries of data in EHRs. ONC is seeking participants for three Query Health Workgroups: the Business Workgroup, the Clinical Workgroup and the Technical Workgroup. 

ONC Issues Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Metadata Standards

On Aug. 5, ONC issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking soliciting public comments on metadata standards to support health information exchange. The ANPRM outlines standards for patient identity metadata (i.e., data required to uniquely select a patient from a population), provenance metadata (i.e., data that provide information on a dataset's history, origin and modifications) and privacy metadata (i.e., data to convey and communicate patient preferences regarding the sharing of his or her health information). Comments were due Sept. 23.

ONC Releases NwHIN Transport Specifications

On Aug. 12, the ONC Office of Standards and Interoperability announced that NwHIN transport and security specifications were available for public review and comment. ONC held two public calls to discuss the specifications in August. Comments were accepted until Sept. 16.

Privacy and Security

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Rural Health IT

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MORE ON THE WEB

• ONC on HITECH Programs
• HealthIT.gov
• CMS EHR Meaningful Use Overview

An amazingly large amount more is found here!

http://www.ihealthbeat.org/features/2011/federal-health-it-activity-heats-up-in-q3-2011.aspx

The scope and range of activity in just a single quarter is really amazing - and flags just how determined the US is to actually move on with all this.

I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to compare this level of progress and activity with what we are presently seeing in Australia.

David.