The HIT Policy Committee — formed as a result of the HIT provisions of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) — held its first meeting in Washington yesterday. David Blumenthal, the recently installed National Coordinator for HIT, convened the session, noting that he was in a bit of an “awkward position as chair of this committee and the principal recipient of its advice.”

Blumenthal set the stage with a few important points. First, he made it clear that “The focus is not on information technology, but on how to make the health system better.”

Second, Blumenthal emphasized that the ARRA HIT provisions were a downpayment on President Obama’s broader goals around comprehensive health care reform: “The President has made clear two main goals: Coverage and delivery system reform. We can’t make coverage gains without making the health system better” and more efficient.

Third,  he made it clear that the ARRA HIT provisions needed to result in three things: “Improving population health, improving individual health, and health system efficiency.”

As he turned the discussion toward the more nuts and bolts issues, Blumenthal talked especially about the issue of defining “meaningful use,” which he said is “in some ways a revolutionary concept.” The timeframe for coming up with this definition is extremely tight and one of the top priorities for his office (ONC) — along with certification and infrastructure building and support.

The meaningful use discussion that followed involved substantial emphasis on the need for meaningful use of HIT to facilitate patient-centered care delivery — which, several committee members stated, inherently means addressing consumers’ privacy and security concerns. Several comments highlighted the need for meaningful EHRs to put patients at the center of the delivery system by promoting patient access to care and consumer ownership of usable information. Importantly, since that is true for all consumers, this patient-centered HIT also needs to focus on reducing health disparities.

Neil Calman also made the excellent point that, “Vendors have to be responsible beyond just the production of the product. Vendors need to support and lead through the process of adoption. They need to teach people how to use the products meaningfully. That will go a long way to making sure that the products are meaningfully used.”

Of course, all of this is in the context of the statute’s alarmingly tight timetable for rule making. In order to help the committee provide substantive input on time, it came to agreement on the establishment of three working groups:

• Meaningful use
• HIT adoption
• Information sharing/exchange

Although other workgroups were discussed, the committee agreed that issues of patient-centeredness and privacy/security should not be independent workgroups; rather, they should be central issues of each group’s deliberations.  HIT adoption will first focus on certification and then move to a broader set of issues around assuring effective and efficient HIT adoption, including infrastructure and workforce training.

Although the committee and ONC have an enormous set of tasks to accomplish in a short period of time, most everyone I’ve talked to agrees that the first meeting was quite successful. And, for me, it was a great feeling to come to the public comment period and not feel compelled to highlight the need for consumer orientation of HIT implementation because so many committee members had driven that point home already.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 at 10:55 am and is filed under Consumer empowerment, EHRs, Engaging Consumers, Inside the Beltway, Privacy & HIT. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.