This Week on ONC HealthIT.gov

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) provides a rundown of weekly HealthIT.Gov activities to its e-mail subscribers. Below are the latest updates. Sign up to receive updates here.

Defining Interoperability

If you happened to log on to www.healthit.gov last week you may have noticed a flurry of activity around the issue of interoperability.

To recap:

Achieving Health IT interoperability depends on five elements:

1. Adoption and Optimization of EHRs and HIE services
2. Standards to Support Implementation and Certification
3. Financial and Clinical Incentives
4. Privacy and Security
5. Rules of Engagement or Governance

To learn more, please take a look at  two blogs on the subject at www.healthit.gov/buzz-blog (Sept. 17 and 18), the whiteboard video and new fact sheet.

Meaningful Consent

Our privacy and security team authored a post, published on the Health Affairs blog, which includes an in-depth description of how we are working to build trust through “meaningful consent.”

And on our website, we launched new pages that explain: “As eHealth Information Exchange increases, patient trust in HIEs must be ensured and patients may more often be asked to make a “consent decision.” This consent decision concerns the sharing and accessing of the patient’s health information through an HIE for treatment, payment, and health care operations purposes.”

New Infographic and Fact Sheets

Everybody seems to like infographics, so we unveiled a new one this week that shows recent stats on providers’ perceptions about how EHRs figure into clinical benefits, practice efficiency and their bottom line.

We also posted three new fact sheets about “Meaningful Consent,” interoperability and one that takes a look at how technology can help patients.

Blue Button

In case you missed it, new and updated content about Blue button has been posted on HealthIT.gov. Take a look, take the pledge and join the movement!

Health IT in Rural Settings

Looking for guidance on Health IT in Rural settings? Look no further with the 6 steps for How to Implement EHRs for Critical Access Hospitals and Small Rural Hospitals.

• Step 1: Assess Your Organization Readiness
• Step 2: Plan Your Approach
• Step 3: Select or Upgrade to Certified EHR
• Step 4: Conduct Training & Implement an EHR System
• Step 5: Achieve Meaningful Use
• Step 6: Continue Quality Improvement

The six steps outlined provide information about how to complete each step in the EHR Implementation process along with relevant resources and tools. Click on each step to get detailed information from start to finish for an EHR implementation.

CAH Data Brief

The folks at our Office of Economic Analysis, Evaluation and Modeling also were busy publishing a new Data Brief on the progress our rural providers are making toward Meaningful Use Stage 1. Worth a read!

Test EHR Pilot

Finally, this week, we launched the Test EHR Pilot Program on September 20, 2013. Pilot participants were selected from those that met the technical requirements for the pilot, and submitted letter of intent to ONC. ONC and CMS will finalize the program requirements, once the pilot is completed. The pilot will run through October 2013.

The following organizations are members of the Pilot Program:

• athenahealth
• iPatientCare
• McKesson Corporation
• MEDITECH