What Does ONC Roadmap Mean for Small Practices?

By SCOTT E. RUPP Earlier this year, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released a paper, “Connecting Health and Care for the Nation: A Shared Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap Version 1.0” designed to deliver “better” care through safe and secure exchange and use of electronic health information. ONC’s current roadmap builds on this ONC paper, with a heart of interoperability of electronic health records (EHRs). Healthcare IT News says the roadmap moves health IT away from meaningful use and creates a potential for data to flow through all parts of healthcare, though it creates no standard for data sharing. The roadmap is one of ONC’s most important issues, an organization spokespeople said, and has a unique impact on the smaller practice, but essentially is nothing more than a best practices guideline. But, it doesn’t address any specific business issue, only creates standards and commitments, said Erica Galvez, interoperability and exchange portfolio manager at ONC. Specifically, the roadmap focuses on creating an ecosystem—bringing a number of different technology platforms together across different venues, including large to small practitioners—to address interoperability challenges, some related to technology (lack of technical standards), some not (like lack of a business case for the roadmap). “While roadmap has the long-term goal of a complete interoperable sy...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: THCB Source Type: blogs