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HIT Policy Committee considers NHIN’s new role

January 15, 2010 | Diana Manos, Senior Editor

WASHINGTON – Members of the HIT Policy Committee wrestled with the fate of the Nationwide Health Information Network during their meeting on Wednesday.

Committee members said the NHIN, a federal interoperability initiative begun in 2004, must now align itself with the newer and more urgent timeline established in the HITECH part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed last February.

The HIT Policy Committee adopted the NHIN workgroup’s recommendation for a "conceptual" framework for the NIHN and what the NHIN should expect from federal agencies. The members don’t know how those recommendations will be turned into actions and deadlines.

David Blumenthal, the National Coordinator for Health IT and chairman of the HIT Policy Committee, said the group will continue to expand its vision for the NHIN at upcoming meetings.

"The NHIN was developed before HITECH," he noted. "Is this sufficient, or should we be thinking more broadly?"

Blumenthal urged the committee to think of ways the government can promote meaningful use as part of the NHIN.

With providers who want to receive bonuses under ARRA expected to demonstrate meaningful use of healthcare IT by 2011, Blumenthal said of the NHIN: "If there are new investments we have to make, new aspirations we need to communicate, we have no time to lose."

The NHIN workgroup chairman, David Lansky, said the NHIN should enable the broadest range of providers to exchange information to achieve meaningful use and enable consumers to be able to access their health information. It should also provide access to states and other organizations that support providers.

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Blumenthal confident IT will take hold across healthcare sector

WASHINGTON – The nation’s healthcare IT chief says he has faith in the "inevitable advancement" of healthcare IT. David Blumenthal, MD, spoke Friday at a conference of the National Committee for Quality Assurance.

Making healthcare IT part of the accepted culture for providing healthcare is not far off, Blumenthal said. With persistent support from the federal government, physicians will see the "value and inevitability" of healthcare IT for improving patient care, he added.

Blumenthal said medical students today are not likely to accept paper records as the standard for use in their profession, when electronic means of information exchange and recordkeeping already pervade the rest of their lives.

He called the era following the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) "an unprecedented opportunity" for advancing healthcare IT.

In February, Congress provided the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) with $2 billion in discretionary funding through ARRA to advance HIT. ONC has already earmarked $235 million for regional extension centers and $80 million to expand the healthcare IT workforce.

Despite the federal investment in healthcare IT advancement, Blumenthal said he envisions a time when the federal government won’t need to be involved. Providers will want to adopt healthcare IT on their own, and electronic health records will become an everyday part of practicing medicine.

There will be a day when providers won’t  expect federal subsidies for healthcare IT any more than they would ask the government to fund their stethoscopes and examination tables, Blumenthal said.

According to a recent physician survey highlighted by Blumenthal, 90 percent of doctors who adopted electronic health records were satisfied. Providers cited the avoidance of adverse drug events and duplicate tests were just some of the reasons they favored EHR use.

Though many physicians still complain about the difficulties initially associated with EHR adoption on their practice workflow, very few would go back to paper records, he said.