On Wednesday, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT announced the creation of two new offices within the agency, Modern Healthcare reports (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 5/16).
The new offices are the Office of the Chief Medical Officer and Office of Consumer eHealth (Goedert, Health Data Management, 5/16). ONC plans to conduct a nationwide search for two individuals to lead the offices.
Office of the Chief Medical Officer
According to an ONC blog post, the Office of the CMO will be responsible for "infus[ing] a clinical perspective across ONC on all activities which have clinical implications," including:
- Clinical decision support;
- Meaningful use policy development;
- Quality, including the development of measurement and metrics;
- Safety; and
- Usability.
Office of Consumer eHealth
The Office of Consumer eHealth will continue the work that ONC's Office of Policy and Planning began on engaging consumers, according to the blog post.
The blog post states, "Creation of this new office provides exciting opportunities for ONC to expand upon the work that is currently underway, including the pledge program and patient-focused challenges" (Walsh, CMIO, 5/16).