CHIME Weighs In on ONC Federal HIT Strategic Plan

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives has submitted comments to the Office of the National Coordinator on the proposed federal health information technology strategic plan.

CHIME supports the plan's goals but wants to see refinements that will increase the likelihood for effective and widespread adoption of IT by healthcare providers.

The comments are contained in an April 18 letter to Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. The letter is signed by Richard A. Correll, president and CEO, and Lynn Vogel, MD, who chairs the CHIME board of trustees.

Ann Arbor-based CHIME has asked the ONC to provide standardized approaches and to allow sufficient time to encourage the adoption of electronic health records systems and supporting technologies by providers.

CHIME's comments in the letter to Mostashari focus on four areas of concern:

• Confidence and trust in HIT. To make sure patient information is shared responsibly, CHIME requests that ONC "further define how consent management should be handled…stored and transmitted through health information exchanges. The consent process must also support exchange with personal health records so that information between patients and their providers – no matter the source – is accurate, secure and furthers the goal of improved care."
• Performance measures. While CHIME supports ONC's approach in quantifying hospital and physician performance in achieving meaningful use objectives, it reiterates its request that the second stage of meaningful use objectives not be implemented before 30 percent of eligible hospitals and eligible professionals have achieved the objectives in the first stage.