Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT

See the following -

A Call To Action For A Nationwide Interoperable Health IT Infrastructure

Karen B. DeSalvo | Health IT Buzz | June 5, 2014

Today we are pleased to release Connecting Health and Care for the Nation: A 10-Year Vision to Achieve an Interoperable Health IT Infrastructure.  This paper describes ONC’s broad vision and framework for interoperability and is an invitation to health IT stakeholders – clinicians, consumers, hospitals, public health, technology developers, payers, researchers, policymakers and many others – to join ONC in developing a defined, shared roadmap that will allow us to collectively achieve health IT interoperability as a core foundational element of better care, at a lower cost and better health for all...

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As Funding Dries Up, ONC Reorganizes, Consolidates Offices

Dan Bowman | Fierce Health IT | May 30, 2014

National Coordinator for Health IT Karen DeSalvo, in an internal memo sent to ONC staffers and emailed to FierceHealthIT late Friday, announced a slew of organizational changes at the agency. The changes also are set to appear in the Federal Register on June 3...

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Combat EHR System Cost Soars By 2,233 Percent

Susan D. Hall | Fierce EMR | March 31, 2014

The Defense Health Agency's electronic health record for combat troops--costing 2,233 percent more than originally estimated--topped the list of Defense information systems projects gone off track in a report from the Government Accountability Office.  Cost for the system, the Theater Medical Information Program - Joint (TMIP-J), Increment 2, soared from $67.7 million in November 2002 to $1.58 billion by December 2013.

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Commentary: A 4-step Approach To Interoperability

Ashish Shah | Government Health IT | May 21, 2014

...While Meaningful Use is an important step for enabling greater adoption of EHRs, it doesn’t provide specifics around the functional use of this data across multiple platforms to improve care. That’s why total system interoperability and data liquidity must be our industry’s ultimate goals...

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E-Prescriptions Hit 1 Billion For First Time In 2013

Bob Brewin | Nextgov.com | July 17, 2014

Electronic prescriptions in the United States hit 1 billion for the first time in 2013 and eclipsed the number of written new and renewal prescriptions of 800,000 by 200,000, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health information Technology reported...

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EHR Association Calls 2015 Criteria Too Disruptive

Mike Miliard | Government Health IT | April 28, 2014

In a letter to National Coordinator for Healthcare Information Technology Karen DeSalvo, MD, the Electronic Health Record Association argues that ONC's proposed Voluntary 2015 Edition Electronic Health Record Certification Criteria rule will cost too much, will disrupt progress and simply isn't "necessary or workable."...

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EHR Certification Process: 'Massive' Changes Ahead?

Marla Durben Hirsch | Fierce EMR | May 13, 2014

Health IT Policy Committee wants to streamline process, limit scope of certification

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Mario Hyland Makes The Case For Continuous Interoperability

Beth Walsh | Clinical Innovation+Technology | July 25, 2014

Interoperability has been a key buzz word heard along the road toward modernizing the American healthcare system. But standards, conformance to those standards, and thorough testing to ensure conformance are all required to achieve true, seamless information exchange. That’s the message advocated by Mario Hyland, senior vice president and founder of AEGIS, a consulting firm focused on advancing a health IT testing infrastructure. Hyland spoke with Clinical Innovation + Technology about current interoperability and testing challenges.

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My Plan To Blow Up Meaningful Use And Make It Useful

John Lynn | LinkedIn | May 15, 2014

...The government gave $36 billion of "shovel ready" (Sorry, I just love the irony of the shovel ready stimulus being only half spent 5 years later) stimulus money for Electronic Health Records (EHR) and wanted to make sure that doctors would actually be "meaningful users" of the EHR software. Where this falls apart is that much of meaningful or that many of the meaning has already been achieved...

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ONC Contract Guidance Attempts To Level The EHR Playing Field

Marla Durben Hirsch | Fierce EMR | August 1, 2013

Regular readers of FierceEMR know that I tend to be cynical about new developments. I don't take them at face value and delve deeper to see if there's anything in addition going on behind the scenes.  And so it is with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT's new "legal" guidance on EHR contract terms.

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ONC Unveils 10-year Plan For Healthcare Interoperability

Dan Bowman | Fierce Health IT | June 5, 2014

...The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT outlined a 10-year plan to develop an interoperable health IT ecosystem that can simultaneously improve population health, boost patient engagement and lower costs...

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Providers Welcome Meaningful Use Relief

Bernie Monegain | Healthcare It News | February 28, 2014

There will be no delay for ICD-10 conversion. But when CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner announced Thursday at HIMSS14 that CMS would be flexible on hardship exemptions for meaningful use requirements, it provided some of the relief healthcare providers – and the professional organizations that represent them – have been seeking...

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Regional Extension Centers Aid States In Health Information Exchange, Quality Improvement

Susan D. Hall | Fierce Health IT | May 13, 2014

As REC funding dries up, organizations shift gears...As funding dries up for Regional Extension Centers, some are moving into a new market: Health information exchange and Meaningful Use support...

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