HIMSS10: Looking Back, Looking Ahead
Editor's note: Associate Editor Mark McGraw filed this blog post while covering HIMSS10 in Atlanta.
Dr. David Blumenthal, national coordinator for health information technology, addressed an overflowing crowd of HIMSS attendees at this morning's keynote address. The timing seemed ideal, less than 24 hours after Dr. Blumenthal led an ONC Townhall meeting here at the conference, to discuss the ONC's release of a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) regarding certifying bodies.
In his address, Dr. Blumenthal took the opportunity to share some other news from ONC, providing an overview of some of the organization's accomplishments in the past year, as well as looking ahead to some future ONC plans.
Among the highlights touched upon by Dr. Blumenthal:
- The organization has dedicated nearly $700 million to support the development of regional extension centers (RECs), in an effort to ensure that vulnerable and underserved patient populations have greater access to health care. To date, 32 RECs have been announced, with more on the way this month, according to Dr. Blumenthal.
- ONC has launched a $564 million program to support health information exchange (HIE); ONC announced several grants last month.
- The organization has created a $235 million program to support "beacon communities," with the purpose of showing what can be accomplished in terms of increasing the efficiency of health care delivery.
- ONC has undertaken a project to expand the Nationwide Health Information Network in order to provide a broader variety of providers and communities access to the network.
- Joy Pritts, an assistant research professor at Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute, was appointed by HHS to serve as the ONC's first chief privacy officer. In this new role, Pritts will advise Dr. Blumenthal on forming policies on privacy, security and data stewardship of electronic health information.
"There's more, "Dr. Blumenthal said, "but I'll stop there."
Instead, he outlined what the ONC hopes to accomplish in 2010; he noted that the organization will have written most of the regulations required by HITECH for the rest of this year. ONC will continue to develop performance metrics to measure the success of its programs, Dr. Blumenthal told the audience, adding that 2010 will be an important next step for the organization, and for the health care industry at large.
"We spent the first year developing policy. Now we begin the process of implementation," he said. "I'm optimistic. I think the wind is at our back."