ONC's 5 HIT Goals For The Next 5 Years
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
More than 35 federal agencies collaborated to create the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020, released this week by HHS.
The Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020 will serve as a strategy for the federal government and “represents a coordinated and focused effort to appropriately collect, share, and use interoperable health information to improve healthcare, individual, community and public health, and advance research across the federal government and in collaboration with private industry,” according to HHS.
According to Modern Healthcare, the plan is an update of an earlier five-year plan released by the ONC in 2011. The ONC must provide long-range national health plans periodically under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
“The Federal Health IT Strategic Plan collectively represents specific goals and strategies for how interoperability will be leveraged to foster the technological advancement of health information exchange to improve quality of care for Veterans while supporting patient-provider interaction,” said Gail Graham, deputy secretary for health informatics and analytics at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration, Office of Health Information.
iHealth Beat reports the five goals of the new plan are:
- Further the adoption of health IT, while increasing user and market confidence in the safety of such products and fostering a national communications framework to support care delivery, health and safety;
- Advance secure and interoperable health data by enabling individuals to securely receive, send and use such data, and take steps to keep those data secure through technical standards;
- Strengthen the delivery of health care;
- Improve individuals' and communities' health and well-being by promoting health engagement; and
- Advance innovation and research by increasing access and use of high-quality electronic health data and services, fostering the development and commercialization of innovative products.
“The 2015 Strategic Plan provides the federal government a strategy to move beyond health care to improve health, use health IT beyond EHRs, and use policy and incentive levers beyond the incentive programs,” said Karen DeSalvo, M.D., national coordinator for health IT and acting assistant secretary for health. “The success of this plan is also dependent upon insights from public and private stakeholders and we encourage their comments.”
"We are very pleased to be collaborating with Health and Human Services, and our other federal partners, on developing the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan. This plan aligns with our health IT priorities. As a large provider and purchaser of care, we continually look for ways to expand the sharing of critical healthcare information with our healthcare partners," said Karen S. Guice, M.D., M.P.P., principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, Department of Defense.