eHI Policy Working Group Hears from ONC and AHRQ
January 14, 2008
Last week, eHealth Initiative's Policy Working Group (PWG) welcomed Charles Friedman, PhD, Deputy National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and Teresa Zayas-Caban, Senior Manager for HIT within the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research (AHRQ) for an interesting discussion about ONC's strategic plan and AHRQ's 2008 consumer focus groups.
Friedman provided the group with an update on the strategic plan that is being developed by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). Recently, an Institute of Medicine (IOM) report called for the development of a comprehensive "strategic plan" to outline what ONC's strategic initiatives would be in order to carry out President Bush's executive order, calling for most Americans to have access to an electronic medical record by 2014. The IOM report outlined the accomplishments of ONC and critiques its operational aspects, but said that it was difficult to measure progress in the absence of a strategic plan. Last year, the House Appropriations Subcommittee noted in their report on the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill that they did not grant the President's proposed funding increase for ONC due in part to the lack of a strategic plan.
According to Friedman, the strategic plan encompasses a five year time frame. It will be organized around a set of strategic goals for the national health IT agenda, with specific objectives that fall under those goals, specific strategies in terms of those objectives, timelines for each strategy and a specific deliverable for each strategy.
Dr. Friedman reported to the PWG that the plan was submitted for clearance to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Friday, December 21, 2007. ONC is expecting comments from various departments within HHS shortly. Once all comments have been addressed by ONC, the plan will receive clearance by HHS and then be submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for final clearance. ONC is anticipating the release of the strategic plan during the February 28th AHIC meeting in Orlando, Florida. Friedman said, in response to a question from an eHI member, that there will be a chance for public comment on the plan, though a specific time period or process has not yet been established.
The strategic plan, according to Freidman, is reflective of the strategic framework released by the previous National Coordinator for HIT, Dr. David Brailer, in 2004; yet the new plan will contain a "level of detail" that is much greater than that report. The strategic plan covers activities of multiple federal agencies, and will also take into consideration the privacy framework currently under development by ONC separately, as well as the AHIC transition to the private sector.
Teresa Zayas-Caban, Senior Manager for HIT at AHRQ, joined the call to discuss the December 28th Federal Register notice that announced AHRQ's intention to begin a series of focus groups in 2008 on consumer engagement in health IT.
According to the Federal Register notice, AHRQ intends to explore "healthcare consumers' awareness and perceptions of Health Information Technology (IT), and how best to engage consumers in the development of these technologies."
Zayas-Caban said that AHRQ will conduct 20 focus groups in five different regions of the country to talk with consumers about health IT. Given all of AHRQ's work in health IT and health information exchange (HIE), Zayas-Caban said the agency wants to involve consumers, and needs to talk with them about the best ways for doing so. The focus groups will explore how consumers want to be involved in the development of HIT and HIE initiatives, including how best to reach consumers, soliciting design suggestions and more. The final report from the focus groups is expected in March of next year.
PWG participants also discussed and provided feedback on eHI's upcoming Government Affairs Retreat.
For more information, please e-mail Aaron.Holman@eHealthInitiative.org.
