In a memo to federal agencies, the Bush administration has raised the bar for complying with directives on implementing health information technology.
The memo from Clay Johnson, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, outlines specific steps and associated deadlines for the Health and Human Services Department to achieve a green compliance rating from OMB. It tells other agencies to develop their own milestones and timelines by the end of November.
OMB scores agencies’ performance on administration initiatives with red for unsatisfactory, yellow for partial success and green for successful. Johnson’s memo notes that all agencies were red in achievements and green for making progress on health IT in the most recent quarter.
In a related memo, Dr. Robert Kolodner, national coordinator for health IT at HHS, said the department would be proud to achieve yellow status by July 1, 2008.
To do that, HHS has proposed creating an inventory of health information exchanges in which the agency is involved, including biosurveillance systems, and cataloging the health IT standards and systems associated with those exchanges. The inventory will also list applicable IT contracts and their expiration dates.
Other steps HHS plans to take to become yellow in the next eight months include:
Implementing health IT standards in one-quarter of federal systems that exchange health data with other entities.
Developing a departmental policy and language for requiring contractors to implement health IT standards.
Preparing a plan for ensuring that HHS software used in providing outpatient care complies with official certification criteria.
Collecting quality measures and the data needed to implement them, and planning for expanded quality measurement for HHS-delivered care.
The memo also lists steps the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT will take to help agencies comply with the directive.
From the battlefield to the home front: Managing medical data
Government Health IT presents Col. Claude Hines Jr., program manager for the Defense Health Information Management System, in this recent InSight eSeminar. Col. Hines discusses the health information technology and tactical challenges faced by the military medical community in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of conflict. In doing so, he describes the current information technology solutions for transferring clinical data between battlefield care givers to health care personnel at military treatment facilities worldwide.
