During a meeting on Monday, Health IT Policy Committee members approved recommendations on health care provider directories and on a foundation for the governance of the Nationwide Health Information Network, Government Health IT reports.
Health Care Provider Directories
The Policy Committee's information exchange work group developed the details of health care provider directories that are meant to aid in exchanging data under meaningful use rules. Under the 2009 economic stimulus package, health care providers who demonstrate meaningful use of certified electronic health records can qualify for Medicaid and Medicare incentive payments.
The directories aim to:
- Simplify data exchange between health care organizations;
- Provide information about the participating groups, such as their data exchange capabilities and security credentials; and
- Offer assistance to Beacon communities and state health information exchanges.
According to Mickey Tripathi -- chair of the work group and CEO of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative -- the directories will contain information related only to identifying an organization, such as addresses or names.
He added that the Health IT Standards Committee will be charged with developing standards related to content, technology and vocabulary.
The health care provider directory information will be collected in a national registry, according to Government Health IT.
NHIN Governance
Also during the meeting, Policy Committee members approved governance recommendations for NHIN.
John Lumpkin -- chair of the committee's governance work group and director of the health care group at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation -- said the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT should oversee governance of NHIN.
Lumpkin said ONC will offer incentives to promote the use of NHIN nationwide. He added that ONC should set specific conditions regarding interoperability and trust within NHIN and within the certification process of EHRs (Mosquera, Government Health IT, 12/15).
Blumenthal Touches on PCAST Report
Also during the Policy Committee meeting, National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal said President Obama strongly supports a recent health IT report by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Blumenthal indicated that the federal government should leverage meaningful use incentives to drive health care providers to accept information exchange language recommendations in the PCAST report.
As part of this effort, the meaningful use work group is considering rules for Stage 2 of the meaningful use program that would require health care providers to exchange patient data with at least one other health care provider (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 12/14).