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.

• Patient-accessed and patient-added health information. CHIME wants to see more alignment among HHS regulations affecting the timeliness of patient access to information. In its letter the executive organization notes that the timeliness standard under the HIPAA provisions "is significantly different from that under the electronic health record meaningful use regulations recently adopted by HHS (30 days for information maintained onsite vs. three business days). CHIME considers the three business day standard unreasonable and is also troubled by the failure to adopt more consistent timeliness standards across HHS regulations."
• EHR evolution. While CHIME supports the development of EHR capabilities, it suggests "caution should be exercised when expecting EHRs to do too much, too fast – such as accommodate multiple languages and disabilities."

"Our comments touch on a number of issues and challenges we're facing while working with ONC to advance and standardize the adoption of health information technology and health information exchange," Indranil "Neal" Ganguly, vice president and CIO of CentraState Healthcare System and a member of CHIME's policy steering committee explained in a statement. "From data safety and integrity to continued evolution in EHR usability, hospital CIOs are at the forefront of this transformation, and we are pleased to offer guidance on how ONC can move forward.

The deadline for public comments has been to May 6.

See Also:
Frustration flares in ONC's MU workgroup debate
ONC: Time to 'double down' on putting patients first