A public meeting today in Washington to discuss the process of transforming the American Health Information Community from a federal government advisory committee to a private organization drew mostly well-known leaders of the health information technology community.
They learned that three of their own would lead key committees to plan the transition during the next two and one-half months. Dr. John Tooker, chief executive officer of the American College of Physicians, will head the committee planning the new organization’s governance structure.
Dr. Jonathan Perlin, former Veterans Affairs health chief and now chief medical officer of Hospital Corporation of America, will lead the membership planning committee. John Glaser, chief information officer at Partners Healthcare System in Boston, will head the committee examining how the AHIC successor organization can become self-sustaining.
No leader has yet been named for the fourth committee, which will plan the transition from AHIC to the new organization. Each of the planning groups will have a co-chair to be selected from among the group’s members.
Many members of the audience urged the transition team from LMI Consulting and the Brooking Institution to keep the focus of the new organization – already known as “A2” – on widespread adoption of e-health records. Some said the existing AHIC, which advises Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt on health IT, has not always stayed on track.
Lawrence Kocot, deputy director of Brookings’ Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform, said the transition team will soon post a document on its Web site suggesting the scope of activities that A2 might undertake.
Kocot also said the new organization will steer clear of policy-making with respect to the privacy and security of electronic health records. But Linda Kloss, chief executive officer of the American Health Information Management Association, said it would be difficult to rule out discussions of policies in this area. Processes, technology and policy are intertwined in health IT, she said, and privacy and security affect operational decisions.
Another theme of the meeting was the need for consumers to be well-represented on A2. Dr. Ross Martin, director of health information convergence at Bearing Point, said consumers might need some kind of financial support for their participation. Industry representatives generally are paid by their companies while participating in such organizations, but consumer organizations lack the funds to devote much staff time to any one organization.
Nominations are open this week for membership in the four planning groups. Nominations should be submitted via the transition Web site. LMI officials said they expect to select the members by the end of March. The committees will work at their assigned tasks until the end of May.
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.
