HHS releases comprehensive plan to encourage nationwide adoption of health IT

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS on Tuesday released a cross-agency directive to speed up the adoption of a nationwide health information technology system that would improve health care quality, increase efficiency, reduce medical errors and address concerns of patient privacy and data security, CQ HealthBeat reports.

The document lays out "comprehensive" guidelines to help federal agencies over the next five years establish a health IT system that would link the private and public sectors, HHS officials said.

HHS' plan was developed as part of an executive order issued by President Bush in 2004, which also established a federal health IT coordinator position. At that time, Bush also announced a goal of granting most U.S. residents access to electronic health records by 2014.

The plan focuses on using health IT to aid in direct care to patients, as well as population health, which addresses efforts to improve public health, planning for large-scale emergency health events, and biomedical research, according to Shannah Koss, vice president of Avalere Health, the consulting firm in Washington, D.C., that helped HHS develop the directive. Koss added that the plan is the first-ever nationwide health IT plan.

The plan's goals include addressing medical privacy, records security, creating uniform standards to ensure the uninhibited flow of health data and methods of assisting health care constituents to work together to create a health IT system. According to CQ HealthBeat, the plan also establishes strategies and milestones for meeting each of its goals.

Robert Colodner, the national coordinator for health IT, said the plan "establishes the next generation of health IT milestones." The document also includes a timeline of the efforts made over the last five years at various federal agencies to implement a health IT system, CQ HealthBeat reports (Reichard, CQ HealthBeat, 6/3).