The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has released its Federal Health IT Strategic Plan for 2015-2020. The plan details how the federal government intends to apply the effective use of information and technology to "help the nation achieve high-quality care, lower costs, a healthy population and engaged individuals."
Accordingly, the newly released strategy is designed to focus on the advancement of health IT innovation and use for a variety of purposes, and is a blueprint meant to aim for the modernization of the U.S. health IT infrastructure. "Individuals, their providers and communities can use it (health IT) to help achieve health and wellness goals," the report's authors stated.
"With this plan, the federal government signals that, while we will continue to work toward widespread use of all forms of health IT, efforts will begin to include new sources of information and ways to disseminate knowledge quickly, securely and efficiently," Karen DeSalvo, M.D., National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, wrote in her introduction to the plan. "This plan will help guide the nation's shift toward focusing on better health and delivery system reform."
The feds believe the successful development and implementation of broader IT infrastructure will "fortify the cultural shifts necessary to strengthen the collaborative relationships for improving health, healthcare, research and innovation."
The federal strategy for health IT has evolved, the organization says in the report. Through implementation of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009, as well as long-term development and use of electronic health systems by Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs, the federal government invested heavily in health IT adoption and electronic information — efforts primarily concentrated on EHR adoption and foundational work to expand health information exchange.
Under the ONC's previous plan, more than 450,000 eligible professionals and 4,800 eligible hospitals received an incentive payment for participation in the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs.
The current plan attempts to take into account how the federal government views the current health IT landscape and "articulates" federal values and priorities and also identifies government actions that "will be most impactful as we look to the future."
The plan is designed to focus on strategies and assess their effectiveness to create more flexibility, and the plan's partners will collaborate to monitor market impact determine how to accommodate and guide the evolution of health IT, so says ONC. Ultimately, through health IT, the ONC's plan is built on the premise that "technology that helps individuals across the nation achieve their full health potential."
Not a stretch of a statement, given that's the charge of the organization.
According to Health Data Management, the plan was developed as a collaboration between more than 35 federal offices that are looking to "expand the ability of individuals to contribute electronic health information that is personally relevant and usable to their care providers so that both can use it effectively in health planning."
In 2011, the first plan focused on EHR adoption. This current model "attempts to leverage a variety of sources, platforms and settings that generate electronic health information to inform health goals, behaviors and decisions."
"Throughout the past five years, our nation's health information technology landscape has experienced a remarkable transformation," DeSalvo said. "Developing the federal health IT strategic plan has given us a chance to reflect on our collective health IT journey. When we released the prior plan in 2011, non-federal adoption of health IT was in its nascent stages, Affordable Care Act implementation was commencing, and the use of mobile health applications, especially by consumers, was far from ubiquitous."
The plan is the ONC's new mission, which explicitly states: Improve the health and well-being of individuals and communities through the use of technology and health information that is accessible when and where it matters most
"Substantial gains in EHR adoption, consumer technology innovation and information demands across the care continuum helped inform the updated federal health IT approach," the plan states. "This approach aims to provide clarity in federal policies, programs and actions. It includes strategies to align program requirements, harmonize and simplify regulations, and aims to help health IT users."
