Posts tagged ONC
ONC Funding for EHR Adoption
Feb 8th
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT is highly committed to the HITECH Act as it is diligently providing technical support to critical access and rural hospitals for the seamless implementation of EHR systems.
In line with that commitment, the ONC recently provided an additional $12 million in funding to 48 regional extension centers (RECs) to the critical access hospitals (CAHs) and rural hospitals. This is in addition to the initial $20 million that was provided to these organizations back in September.
The overall purpose of this funding is to enhance the technical support offered by RECs in order to accelerate the switch to electronic health records. Implemented as part of the Medicare and Medicaid incentive programs, the RECs are dedicated to offering guidance, support, necessary information and technical support to practices in order to facilitate their “meaningful use” of EHR technology.
ONC’s Final Rule for Permanent Certification Program
Jan 14th
The final rule for the establishment of a permanent certification program for health information technology is has been released by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. It will be used to permit organizations to declare Electronic Health Record (EHR) technology. The details of the permanent certification program are as follows:
- Organizations are required to be recognized by an ONC-Approved Accreditor (ONC-AA) so they can become Authorized Certification Bodies (ONC-ACBs) in order to test and verify health information technology.
- The status of ONC-AA will be given to a single accreditation body at a time and the selection will be made on a competitive merit basis.
- The ONC-AA is required to be updated every three years, during which time the ONC will be accepting renewal applications as well.
- There will be six ONC-ACBs that will to renew the three year status for ONC-AAs.
- ONC-ACBs have to carry out post-certification surveillance.
- ONC-ACBs are allowed to carry out “gap certification,” giving the option for and conducting gap certification of already certified EHRs.
- ONC-ACBs are permitted to certify other forms of HIT when applicable certification standards are already met.
- ONC-ACBs must allow requests for newer editions of a previously certified EHR so the newer version can also be certified.
The ONC will apply to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) through its National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program (NVLAP) to come up with a laboratory accreditation program for organizations that wish to be accredited to test health information technology. Testing will be enhanced by the use of NVLAP since NIST has credible technical expertise and has cordial relations with the ONC. The ONC’s main objective is to achieve a smooth transition to the permanent certification program.
The White House Urges Standards for Health Information Exchange
Dec 9th
In a White House report published on December 8th, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) advocated the adoption of standards (i.e., a universal exchange language) to enable healthcare providers to exchange patient health information in real-time. The White House urged the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to develop definitions for a standard language and include them in provisional requirements for achieving “meaningful use” of EHRs in order to modernize and coordinate diagnoses while also incorporating privacy and security of personal data.
According to the report, the federal government has made significant progress in transitioning the country’s healthcare system to IT, but information is still being trapped in proprietary systems, not allowing healthcare providers to share patient data.
PCAST recommends that EHRs exchange patient health information in a standard way that is based on meta-data, tagged-data elements. The ONC reports that it has begun developing universal standards that support interoperability and communication across various EHR platforms.
In order to protect the privacy and security of all this exchanged data, the report proposes that the data be split into elemental pieces and be supplemented by a meta-data tag that not only describes the data, but also includes the patient’s preferences for that data and any required security protections. This technology for universal exchange languages, called extensible mark-up languages, is already in use by other industries. It enables specific health information to be kept private while allowing other information to be disclosed, depending on the patient’s preferences.
Currently through January 17th, 2011 the ONC is encouraging and asking for public comments on the report. You can submit your comments regarding the report.
View PCAST’s report and get further knowledge.